Up-Cycling - Tree of Life Drawer Unit

Video HERE

As I have said before, I do love a joblot, and sometime ago I won a load of wooden drawer units from Ebay. However, they have so far just been collecting spiders in a corner of the shed and after stubbing my toe one too many times I decided that something needed to be done...

This is a fairly simple design, made unnecessarily difficult because that's pretty much how I roll (!).

If you're looking to upcycle a similar drawer unit please think ahead - when designing new drawer fronts take into account how much room you actually have to work with and how much thickness your materials will add. Or do as I did and perform some rather dodgy surgery part-way through.

Obviously, your box/drawer unit or whatever will be different in size and shape, but this is the general process that I went through to build mine.

You Will Need:
Wooden Drawer Unit
Sandpaper
Thin Plywood
Leather Scraps*
Strong Glue
Brown Paper**
Tree of Life Pattern
Small Brass Pins + Hammer
Gold Silk Thread
Punch
Dark Brown, Ochre and Gold Acrylic Paint + Brushes
Masking Tape
Leather Feed or Moisturizer***
Paste Wax
Fabric or felt for lining

*You will need larger pieces to fit the drawer fronts, smaller scraps for the box. I had a number of 15x25cm pieces which were ideal.
**You can cover or paint the drawers as you like. I chose brown paper, which was a mistake as there was a void in the bottom of each drawer which left the paper unsupported and prone to riping.
***I use E45 cream, which is thinner than normal leather feed, but I prefer the shine it gives as well as conditioning.

Method:

1. First, evict the spiders and brush off the cobwebs, then sand off any finish*, dust off or hoover out the drawers.
2. Cut the ply to just larger than the drawer fronts** and glue a piece of leather onto the front of each with about 15mm (1/2") overlap.
3. Wrap the drawers with brown paper, or re-paint if you like. (You can line them now, or wait until everything else is done).
4. Scale your pattern up to fit, then mark into pieces to fit the drawers - I don't cut them until I'm ready to use them.
5. Glue the ply fronts to the drawers, wrap around the overlap and glue into place, pinching the corners together to create a neat edge. Fix the leather down with a few pins if you like, but it shouldn't be necessary if your glue is strong, I did it more for the look.
6. One drawer at a time, place the pattern onto the leather and hammer in pins along the lines at around 7-8mm intervals, closer around curves.
7. Remove the pins and pattern, then working one line at a time, put the pins back in and hammer about 1/3 into the drawer (or until stable enough to work around) then weave the thread around and back a few times.*** Hammer the pins down, then move on to the next section.
8. Once the pattern is completed go back around with a punch and hammer the pins tight to the leather. Rub a little glue into the threads to stabilize them and stop them fraying over time.
9. Plan where your leather will go on the outside then paint the visible parts of the box with dark brown or black**** acrylic - best to start with a watery coat, then a thicker one, particularly on the inside.
10. Mask off the inside of the box then paint the edges and the gaps between the leather with ochre then a couple of coats of gold.
11. Give the inside of the box and the gold lines a generous layer of wax and buff it well.
12. Glue the leather to the outside and add pins for decoration*****.
13. Rub the leather down with feed or moisturizer, then leave to soak for a few hours before buffing off any excess.

*My drawers had many layers of paint, which I could have sanded back to bare wood, but in the end I settled for taking off the surface paint and varnish to give a better surface for glue.
**As I've already said, BE CAREFUL how much thickness you add to the drawers - I forgot to take into account how much the leather would add and how tight the frame already was.
***I weaved each line 4 times, then went round with a needle to pull the cord into a neater line, particularly around the curves.
****When painting gold I like to base coat with dark brown and ochre, which helps to add some depth to the metallic shades (particularly as I'm using a cheaper brand).
*****You may have difficulty on sections of the box that are unsupported, I found that putting the boxes in helped to some degree, but there will still be some vibration (And after my surgery the frame couldn't stand too much of that before cracking the joints,)

I very much like this design, I have used the Tree of Life image on many boxes and I think this one is the best so far, but as usual, I have made it unnecessarily complicated!