Original wooden rootbeeer barrel display

Several years ago we received an original Frostop wooden root beer barrel from a man that used to repair them for Frostop's. He clearly had it stored in the back of a garage or something so it wasn't in the best shape, so he was more than willing to let us take it off of his hands. Well we put in the back of our outside boat shed and let it sit for a few more years. This past May I finally decided it was time to do something with the old barrel. I decided to clean it up and display it in our dining room at the LaPlace Frostop. There was now a corner in our dining room that we had made into our Frostop memorabilia area.

The picture above shows the terrible shape the barrel was in. At some point in its history someone had painted varnish over the 8 metal bands. I can only assume that where it was stored for many years someone spray painted near it without covering it. All of that need to be cleaned up in order to display the barrel. The restoration would be more time consuming than I thought! I got some goof off and removed the spray paint and cleaned up the wood. The hard part was cleaning the metal bands. With the help of a Dremel and sander along with the goof off, I was finally able to clean up the bands one band at a time - each band taking me about an hour to clean! After the top bands were done, I flipped it over to clean the 4 bands at the bottom. The top was spray painted with a few coats and then it was time to bring it to the LaPlace Frostop.

At this point the barrel needs a logo for the front, a tap, and a stand ......

Great logo from Tony's Tinting - they even came and put it on the barrel for us!

Our barrel on its stand in its new home!

Looking good in the "Frostop Corner"

Danny from Miller came through with a tap for the barrel! The restoration is complete!

To see pictures of the entire process on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laplacefrostop/sets/72157618832979442/