It may seem odd that you can distress furniture with such odd and ends as a hammer, fence pliers and a length of chain, but it's all highly effective and potentially even fun.
After all, who doesn't want to reduce their stress a bit by beating a chair or table with a well placed chain or bore faux worm holes into the wood with a pair of fence pliers. Certainly, the folk classic "If I Had a Hammer" takes on a whole new meaning when you're trying to distress furniture.
Furniture Feet Protectors
If you want to distress furniture, it's easier than you think. The trick is to find a piece of furniture that looks as if it's been handed down for generations. It can be a chair, table, dining room set, a sideboard or buffet - it doesn't matter. In fact, it could be a brand new piece of furniture you found at an unfinished furniture factory or a once loved furnishing wasting away in a dusty corner of a thrift store.
As long as it is structurally sound and made of wood, it's a potential candidate for distressing.
One of the great things about distressing furniture is that there are plenty of great products out on the market. Once you've applied a little tough love with chain, pliers and hammers, you can use a number of finishing techniques to make your furniture look cracked, aged and worn, even though it's a brand new finish.
Before you get down to finishing your furniture, you want to rough it up a bit. A piece of heavy link chain can be purchased from any home improvement store. About a foot will be fine. When you strike the piece of wood, the chain will make concave dents in the wood. Be sure you do this randomly and don't get too carried away. The effect should look random, not angry. The same is true with a hammer. Strike the wood so that the edge of the hammer head makes a dent. Don't hit it flat as it will make a round shape. That's not what you want. Finally, you can use fence pliers to bore holes in strategic places, like a worm had bored into the wood. Use a little artistic license in placing all the dents and holes. Remember, you can always add more but you can't make less.
Once the piece of furniture has been roughed up a bit, give it a good coat of primer. Let it dry thoroughly. You now have a couple options for finishing the furniture. One technique is to create wear marks on the finish. You can do this by painting a base coat of paint. Once it has dried, apply a layer of paste wax to the areas that you want to have wear marks. This can be the edges of a chair, the top edges of a dresser or the pull knobs on a desk. If you're not sure, just touch the furniture without thinking about it, as if you're going to open it or move it. Then note the spots you naturally grabbed.
Once the paste wax is set up a bit, add a second layer of contrasting paint. Let it dry. With sandpaper, sand the places that you want the lower coat of paint to show. The wax will make it easy for the top coat to be removed, revealing the lower coat. Just keep sanding until you like the appearance.
If you want to go with another option, you can add a crackle paint finish to the distressed furniture effect. The process is similar. After priming, add a base coast of paint. Let it dry fully. Next, apply crackle medium to the chair then immediately paint on the top coat, which can be a contrasting color. The paint will start to shrink and crack as it dries, creating that really cool look that shoppers pay top dollar for in the store.
Of course, these are just a few of the many effects you can use to distress furniture and make it look like it has been in your family for generations. You can also apply some techniques such as shoe polish to create artificial aging to make your furniture look older than it really is. Your home improvement store can show you other options that are on the market.
One thing's for sure. With some basic tools and off the shelf products you can distress furniture like the pros do and for pennies on the dollar. That alone makes this project well worth your time and effort.
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Oct 23, 2011 15:06:33
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