I love the aged or antique style of the furniture for design solutions. Especially if I apply styles such as French Country or Farmhouse, where the lived furniture has a great specific weight.
Unfortunately, however, I can’t always afford a wallet tour from the antique dealer, so I studied the experts’ various methods of making a modern piece of furniture antique. In this article, I’ll reveal expert tips on how to make furniture look antique.
Contents
Techniques to distress wooden furniture and create an antique effect
On the net, there are various extravagant techniques to distress the wood and make it look antique.
The main techniques are:
- Sanding Wood
- Scraping Wood
- Dry Brushing
Antique effect with the Sanding technique
The sanding technique is one of the simplest to create a worn or old effect on your wooden furniture. This technique is also very cheap. You just need to equip yourself with a bit of sandpaper.
According to experts, the trick is to use patience and sanding by hand, avoiding electric tools that could ruin the wood.
Below you can see the video with the Handyman’s tips for perfect sanding. My advice regarding the antique effect is to sand only some points, such as the edges of the drawers or all those points of possible contact, and rub to accentuate wear.
Tip
According to experts, the trick is to use patience and sanding by hand, avoiding electric tools that could ruin the wood.
Antique effect scraping the wood
It is no coincidence that I show you this technique immediately after the sanding. You must know there is always a great debate between the two very similar techniques.
With the scraping technique, you just need to equip yourself with a wood chisel and what you will have to do to make an antique effect is to scrape the paint off your furniture unevenly.
Tip
For your antique effect, be sweeter and less heavy with your hand
In this video, J. Katz-Moses find the proper technique to scrape wood like a pro. For your antique effect, be sweeter and less heavy with your hand 😉
Antique effect with dry brushing
Dry brushing is an excellent technique for making our furniture look older than it actually is. Just a brush and a little paint and follow the advice of the experts for a guaranteed result.
The trick of the experts is not to overdo the effect and the paint. We have to be delicate and subtle. However, dry brushing requires you to go through the smoothing technique first.
Tip
The final touch is to spray a couple of coats of clear polyurethane when everything is dry so that we are going to preserve our custom color and effect.
In fact, we will have to sand our furniture lightly. Subsequently, we will have to apply a coat of clear varnish that will act as a base and then dry a clear varnish that integrates with the base coat we have given.
The final touch is to spray a couple of coats of clear polyurethane when everything is dry so that we are going to preserve our custom color and effect.
In this video of a few years ago by Shauanna West, you can see these dry brushing techniques and the effect received even on an already colored piece of furniture.
Conclusions
As we have seen, with a bit of manual work, not too demanding, you can transform banal furniture into furniture with a respectable antique effect. You almost want to pick up a piece of furniture a little and then be able to work it with these particular techniques.
If you have made furniture with an antique effect and want to share it with us, you can send us your photos.
