an update and dealing with chippy veneer

Thanks so much to everyone for suggesting I do something special with the WWI mail pouch I found at a yard sale last weekend.   I called the National WWI Museum to see if they would be interested and they're going to get back to me.  My mom then sent me a link with information about an Albert Lufkin Crombie from Beverly, Mass. The dates worked with the dates on the bag and the first location he recorded was Boston, so it made sense.  We found him!  He was married to Elizabeth Crombie (who shares my birthday.)  He passed in 1976, so I'm working on finding his family.  Thanks so much to Amy and Julie for helping me in this.  If anyone has any information, please share.  I would love to give this bag to his family.

I've been so distracted by this, I wasn't able to work on my post until almost 11pm.  Yikes!  When I'm on a mission, look out!  Anyway, today I was working on a doosy of a dresser.  The drawers were jacked up and the top had only about half of the veneer.  I had a babysitter for several hours, so it was time to tackle it. 

There was no saving this veneer, so it had to be removed.  I'm sure there is some super technical and brilliant way to do this, but I always remove it with a chisel and hammer. 

I use the chisel to gently pull up small pieces...

...and I'll wedge the chisel under the larger pieces and pound the end with a hammer to pry up the veneer.  Make sure you wear safety glasses when doing this, because veneer shrapnel will fly everywhere!

Here's the dresser with all of the veneer removed off the top.  Pretty one, isn't she?

Now, if I was super skilled with a chisel, the top of the dresser wouldn't look like this.  In my defense, a lot of these gouges were from the previous owner's efforts to remove the veneer, but don't worry, we're going to make this work. 

I sanded down the top to make the gouges softer and less obvious. 

You might think I would use wood filler and more sanding before I paint, but nope...not today.  I just went right ahead with the paint (an equal blend of ASCP Louis Blue and Paris Gray.) 

More to come...