Hawkeyes for Life

So, the bf and I were hunting for garage sales yesterday when we came across a sale listed on Craig's List. The listing said that it was a large building filled with antiques and such. It sounded enticing so we decided to check it out. When we pulled up, we were greeted with a property out in the middle of nowhere, Iowa with tons of, uh, 'stuff' all over. And when I say 'stuff' i mean TONS of 'stuff'. Yikes! I'd call this more of a barn sale because it was literally a giant Morton building filled to the brim with things.

We searched through (i.e. tried not to trip over...) all of the goodies looking for that diamond in the rough. We came across a winner; a clock that definitely needed saving!!

It's an old Iowa wooden clock that I searched for online, but haven't been able to find any real information about it. It looks like it's probably from the 80's...but I'm not 100% sure on that. It was dirty...really dirty...

I wiped it down and washed it up hoping that the clock mechanism would work. But, when I put in a fresh battery, nothing happened. So, my first task to dismantle the entire clock. I tore off the hands and threw away the clockworks, then dismantled everything else.

I even came across a fun surprise! Behind the Iowa clock face was one for the Purdue Boilermakers! This makes me wonder if this was originally a clock kit. Otherwise, I'm not sure where the extra face came from.

Super cool! 

I sanded down all of the wood to remove the old finish, stain, and dings. I cleaned the plastic face protector and tried to clean the Hawkeye face itself, but unfortunately somewhere along the line there was water damage to the paper so it was stuck to the plastic. Pulling it off to clean it completely would have ruined it, so I left it alone. Once sanded, it all looked much better!

I did one quick coat of stain on it in 'Early American' and it looked good as new!

Since the clock mechanism was KO'ed, I went to the local hardware store to pick up a new kit. Unfortunately it was too hard to see the gold hands against the Hawkeye background so I primed the metal hands in grey and painted them black. The hands are currently drying so it should all be finished later today. :)

Once it's finished...I'll be sure to let you all see the end result!