Building the PB Inspired Rebecca Trunk

An Easy to Build Piece for the Indoors or Outdoors

The Rebecca Trunk from Pottery Barn… Gorgeous! The bad news is that it retails for $499.00! Yikes! It really is a beautiful piece!

I drew the plans for this piece for The Design Confidential. It uses only ONE sheet of plywood! By the time I bought the rest of the supplies listed in the plans, I spent about $100.00 including stain, paint, and spar varnish. Not too bad! I’ll share my process of building the PB inspired Rebecca Trunk.

I decided to use mine outdoors on my porch as a “coffee table” of sorts… Today, I will share with you the steps I used in building the trunk, as well as the hardware I used and how I created the awesome finish!

See the actual project plans for a list of lumber and supplies! The free furniture plans can be found at The Design Confidential.

Cut the plywood pieces for the trunk…

Assemble as directed in the plans…

Add the baseboard trim…

I painted the inside…

…then got to work on the outside finish.  I used two different stains – Rust-Oleum’s Ultimate Wood Stain in Sunbleached and Minwax Special Walnut. I also used Rust-Oleum’s Spar Varnish in Satin on the exterior. (Now that is a fantastic product!!)

I used the Walnut stain first, spreading it on with a foam brush.

Then without letting the Walnut stain dry, I applied the Sunbleached stain and rubbed it in with an old t-shirt.

I kept alternating the stain colors until I was satisfied.

I let it dry overnight and applied another coat of Sunbleached stain.

Once the stain was totally dry, I applied three coats of the Spar Varnish… Sanding in between coats two and three. I also applied the varnish on the inside.

I applied the hanger tape to the edge of the lid and fastened it in place with upholstery tacks.

Here is the finished edging – See the Spar Varnish finish? I love this stuff!

Once I added the hinges and the handles, I moved the piece to its new home on my porch in front of my new sectional I’ve been working on… Do you like my torches?

Building the PB Inspired Rebecca Trunk is so easy and the finish came out so nice! I’m proud to say that the spar varnish has really done its job protecting the wood from the elements! The trunk gets rained on, snowed on, and walked on by all sorts of furry critters and still looks fabulous. Any questions? Contact me at cher {at} designsbystudioc {dot} com!

Originally posted 2012-05-20 08:00:06.