You only have a weekend to get your latest home improvement project done.
You’ve been wanting to update some of the furniture in your home, but you’re not sure how to create that trendy distressed look without spending too much.
Fortunately for you, there are a few simple ways for how to antique furniture, no matter the surface or finish you’re distressing.
Read on to learn more about how to make your furniture stylishly distressed.
How to Antique Furniture
Distressing your furniture starts with properly preparing you whatever surface you’re working with. Your first step is gathering the necessary materials for distressing your furniture.
What You’ll Need
You don’t need that many materials to create distressed furniture. The materials you do need are pretty affordable, too.
- Furniture cleaner
- Sandpaper or steel wool
- Paintbrushes or rollers
- Paint
- Polyurethane
- Stain
- Candle
- Drop cloths or tarp
- Rags
Now, you have the option of paint or stain, depending on the finish you want. If you have a workspace you don’t mind getting dirty with paint or stain, you don’t necessarily need the drop cloths or tarp.
Prep Your Space and Your Piece
After you’ve accumulated the needed tools, you should prepare your workspace. If you’re indoors, make sure the space is well-ventilated for any paint or stain fumes, as well as debris from sanding.
All you need to do is lay down your tarp or drop cloths. Take a rag and spray it with furniture cleaner to remove any residue on the surface. Then, remove any hardware from the piece you’ll be staining.
Sand It Down
After you’ve prepared your workspace and piece, you can start to remove the topmost layer of polyurethane. Depending on the size of the piece you’re distressing, you might prefer a sander to help make the job easier. If your piece has small corners, sandpaper will get into those better than a sander.
Sanding down your furniture provides a rough layer for primer or paint to stick to. It also smooths out rough corners for a truly distressed look.
Prime and Paint
With the surface sanded down, you can now apply a coat of primer to your piece of furniture. You can purchase a primer with high-adhesion to make sure it really gets into the grooves of the wood unless your piece is made of another material.
Let the layer of primer dry before you apply any paint. Once it’s dry, you can roll the paint on. You can then smooth out the roller’s texture with a paintbrush. This will create a brushed-on look, like worn, rustic distressed wood.
Sand It Down Again
For properly distressed paint, and to avoid too much of a “done” look, you should re-sand the furniture. Re-sanding it will create a naturally weathered appearance, allowing the natural wood to come through.
Depending on the type of weathering and the amount of distress you want, you can use steel wool instead of sandpaper. Steel wool creates a different distressed look than sandpaper, so either will work.
Layer on the Stain
With the desired amount of wood showing through, staining over the paint will give you a really great look for your furniture.
When you apply the stain with a cloth in straight lines with the woodgrain. Wipe any excess stain away to avoid uneven layering.
Once this first coat of stain dries, add further coats of stain to create a deeper and richer color. If you overlay different types of stain, you can create a layered look. The correct color of stain will allow you to create a light wood effect.
Apply Polyurethane
Once you’ve achieved the desired level of weathering and layering with the stain, allow it to dry. You should then apply a finishing coat of polyurethane. Applying this coat of polyurethane will seal the satin and ensure the durability of your newly distressed furniture.
When you pick a type of polyurethane, make sure it matches the type of stain you chose. Oil-based stain means oil-based polyurethane.
You’ll also want to select a clear topcoat. You can choose matte or high-gloss to make your hard work stand out. Apply it with a foam brush for easy and even application.
Reconnect Hardware or Doors
If the piece of furniture you distressed had doors, you had to take them off to properly sand and stain them. Now that they’re finished, you can reattach them! If you didn’t have any doors to take, and it was just hardware, you can reattach them.
If you were distressing the legs of an upholstered piece of furniture, before you reattach them, you should clean the fabric. Now that you’ve got newly distressed furniture, you should use the best upholstery cleaner to match the fabric and the beautiful work you’ve done.
Dressed and Distressed
With your newly distressed furniture, your home and hard work have paid off. All you needed was a weekend to update your home with a trendy design for your furniture.
You didn’t have to any hard hunting for overpriced antiques and you can take pride in the fact that you put in your time and effort to improve a fine piece of furniture, all while saving money on overly priced name brand pieces.
Now that you’ve distressed one piece of furniture for your home, you have the option to match your handiwork to various other pieces in your home.
Give yourself a few weekends and you’ll have high quality, modern decoration at a reasonable price. Be sure to look for more useful content like this from us in the future.