Rocking Horse Re-Do

A few months ago, we got a nice surprise in the mail. My Aunt and her bestie sent us a package that contained an old rocking horse that Beth (My Aunt Mary's BFF) found on the side of the road, looking all sad and abandoned, and my Aunt Mary's old baby doll cradle. Both were in pretty sad shape, but the moment Hubs saw it, he got so excited. Another project for him!

Here is how the rocking horse looked when we got it and put it together (They partly disassembled it to ship).

She looked so sad! =(

As you can see, poor old horsey is in need to some lovin'.
So John set to work. He started by removing the remainder of the hair on the main and tail. It wasn't much to remove, so he just gave it a nice tug. He also had to take out the eyes. One was cracked and it would have been a hazard if Eleanor was ever going to play with it, which was the reason for restoring it in the first place. Then John started sanding the old finish off. He worked until it was too dark to work outside. FYI, John actually had a LOT of school work to do, but this was obviously more important. LOL

Once it was all sanded, he put horsey back together to take a picture. He is so much better at pictures (Before, during and after) when doing a project, than me!

When the weekend hit, we took a trip to the local hardware store for some stain. We picked an Oak color, which is supposed to be a medium stain. I didn't want the horse to be very dark so we chose that one. We wanted to keep the horse looking pretty original to what she looked like before. Little did we know, that the oak, which was supposed to be a light stain, would make a golden brown horse, look like black beauty. The poor horse looked awful.
I felt awful too. I didn't want him to re-sand, but both of us hated the color. We actually thought it was going to be ruined. After one round of stripping, he brought the body of the horse back in and asked what I thought. The color actually looked great. It looked pretty rustic. I asked John how he liked it as it was. He hadn't thought about it, but once he stripped all the legs and the rockers to the same color, he ended up liking it too. So we just decided "Eh, good enough!"

While he was stripping and sanding the horse outside, I sat inside and created the main and tale for horsey (she didn't have a name yet). I saved the old tufts and used them as reference for how long I needed to cut the new ones. I got the yarn from Joann's that looked as close to blonde as I could find. I had some help from a few kiddo's in the yarn section =)

Please excuse my lack of modesty. Had I know John was taking pictures, I would have been a little more appropriate! And then there's Charlie. LOL! 

I also got the reigns from Joann's as well. I honestly had no idea what I was going to use, until I went down the curtain aisle. Turns out, a golden curtain holder did the trick.

So once we got Horsey all back together, we started putting the hair back in. We used a combination of wood glue and an industrial stapler. For the tail, we took a big group of yarn strands, tied them together, cut the excess as close to the tie as possible (making it look like a pony tail). Then we put lots of wood glue on the spot where horsey's tail was meant to be and prayed it would stay. We also put some staples in the bottom and top to try to make it as secure as possible. After a few hours, John took a few good tugs on the tail and it didnt budge so we just called it a day. Then we started working on the main. We took groups of ten strands, found the middle, and did a combo of gluing and stapling them into the grooves where the main was supposed to go. We ended up doing this about 10-12 times before we did one big tuft on top of the head, tied a few knots in a few of the strands so that the staples wouldn't be noticeable. When she was all done, I gave her a little hair cut, just to clean up some of the ends that were too long.

Yes, that's our kitchen. John Couldn't decide whether he wanted to work in the living room or kitchen. So he chose both. We really need a garage! 

The last thing was the eyes. Since one of the eyes was cracked, we couldn't save them. I searched high and low for "rocking horse eyes" but the closest thing I found was "toy eyes" on Etsy. We had to settle on Toy Eyes. They are supposed to be eyes for stuffed teddy bears and toys similar, but when we got them in, Hubby drilled a hole where the eyes are supposed to go on each side and it turned out pretty good.

I also decided to name the horse "Goldie". I thought it was pretty fitting. Shes got gold reigns, golden blonde hair, and such a pretty brown color. All in all, I think we did a good job taking Goldie, cleaning her up really nice, and making her beautiful again. I also let her borrow one of Eleanor's bows. Every prize horsey needs a pretty bow! =)

By the way, remember that old cradle that I mentioned that my Auntie Mary sent me? We just finished the rehab on that one, so a blog post will be soon to follow on that, too!

Cheers!