I alluded to this in the last post I made and intended to make this post a long time ago, but life decided to be cantankerous right about the time I was getting ready to do it and, well. Here we are now.
Anyway, I guess this goes here - if it doesn't, my apologies. Tell me where to move it and I will!
I received this carrying case when I was a kid, and pretty much from the get-go I decided to use it as a home for my very favorite ponies - the ones I thought were especially pretty, or that had a lot of sentimental value. The case worked pretty well for a while, but over time it incurred a lot of wear and tear, something that wasn't helped by it being made of cheap, flimsy materials.
When I pulled it out of the garage a few weeks ago, I realized what a mess it was - dilapidated, dirty, broken down and falling apart. It was like My Little Tenement.
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loginNot pictured: Bad Touch the registered offender pony, Backhand the pimp pony, and Track Marks, the Twice as Fancy drug pony.
This wasn't the way I wanted my favorite ponies to live! Mass-produced pieces of plastic they might have been, but they deserved better for all the years of happiness they'd brought me in my childhood. For a while I thought about simply throwing the case away and storing my favorites in the big cedar cube with the rest of my collection, but then I wondered if the case was so far gone it couldn't be salvaged with a little work and ingenuity. The shell itself was in reasonably good shape, all things considered; it was those cardboard shelves that really needed to go. The weight of the ponies stacked on them was causing them to bow badly, and they were deforming the vinyl-coated cardboard shell along with them.
I was ridiculously hesitant to do anything that might deface a ~vintage collectible~, so my mantra during this project was that I wasn't ever going to be selling the thing on eBay anyway and I couldn't possibly be doing it any harm by fussing with it a little. With this in mind, I examined the case to see how it was put together. The shelves are attached to the shell by metal brads, like so:
It was a little tricky prying the brads out of the case, but I finally accomplished it, leaving the shelves and shell as two separate pieces.
And a lot of disgusting grime.
See these little black and white specks? That's spider poop.
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loginOh, thanks a lot, spiders. I don't come take a dump all over your stuff, do I?
I scrubbed everything with warm soapy water, a little bleach and then another warm water rinse, plus some Goo-Gone to take off the glue that had held the shelves in place against the back wall of the case. It all looked much nicer once it had been cleaned up.
Then it was time to gather my supplies. A quick stop at Home Depot after work provided everything I needed.
Took the particleboard shelves outside to spray paint, and while waiting for the paint to dry, it was time to bathe some ponies.
They were just a
little filthy after thirty years.
With all the ponies washed and their manes and tails air-drying, I brought in the painted boards and got to work assembling the shelf unit. The two side pieces needed a total of five holes drilled in each side - one for a screw to attach the unit to the sides of the shell, and four to mount some little plastic brackets, on which the shelves would rest. The brackets themselves needed their pegs clipped down, as the pegs were longer than the particle board was thick.
Here's a completed side piece with the shelf brackets in place...
...and here is the finished shelf unit installed in the shell.
I'd wanted to pull the white plastic "stalls" off the cardboard shelves and put them on the new ones, but the plastic was so flimsy, and the glue holding them in place so strong, that I would have just torn them apart and ruined them. So no neat little stalls in the case now. Oh well.
Finally, there was the issue of the front flap. Originally it had a snap clasp that held it closed; that had gotten torn off long ago after years of use, and I wasn't sure how I might replace it. I thought that velcro might hold the flap closed just as well.
With the case cleaned, the broken-down shelves replaced and the velcro patches affixed, all that remained was moving the ponies into their new home. After a little photo shoot, of course.
Banana Surprise, Little Flitter, Sunlight and Baby Sunribbon, who I believe is the very last pony I bought for myself. Considering who else shares real estate with her, this is sort of fitting.
For some reason a lot of the ponies in this case have the same pose. Here's Windy, Caramel Crunch, Flower Bouquet and Merry Treats, now with 100% less spider poop.
And here are the gems of my collection, some of my (and my sister's) very first ponies: Cotton Candy, Minty, Butterscotch, Firefly, Medley, Baby Cotton Candy and Firefly, and Twilight.
Twilight stands out as my absolute favorite of all my ponies. Her symbols are rubbed down almost to nothing, and I didn't quite get all the scuff marks off of her. But then I realized that I didn't really want to; I didn't need my favorite pony to be fully restored and eBay-worthy. She'd earned those scuffs and glitter loss; they were badges of honor, a testament to the fun I'd had with her. I like to imagine that she wears those marks with pride.
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Photo shoot over, I moved the ponies into their new home. Since I'm an idiot, I measured some things wrong so that the lower shelf doesn't provide enough clearance for the taller ponies, so most of the ones on the lower shelf had to move upstairs. Everyone fits, though, one way or another.
It's not perfect; the velcro doesn't all line up precisely and the issue with the shelves still bothers me a little, but the case serves its intended purpose of holding ponies, so I consider this project a success.
That's it for now! I've got some pretty exciting (to me) brags in the pipes, though. Hopefully I'll get those written up in a more timely fashion than I got this post out.
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