Painting Furniture in an Antique Style

1. Find a space to work in. You’ll need a space big enough for your furniture and it needs to be well-ventilated. A garage works well, just make sure you keep the door open to get fresh air. Lay down a tarp or newspaper before you get started for easier cleanup later.

2. Unscrew any knobs, hinges, or pulls from the furniture and set aside. It’s easier to paint without them.

3. Start by sanding the furniture in the direction of the grain. Coarse grit sandpaper will create a more distressed surface than a fine grit. The more distressed the piece is, the older it will look. If you’re working with a large piece of furniture like an armoire or a dresser, use an electric sander to save time.

Painting Furniture in the Shabby Chic Style

Shabby Chic is a style that is very much in fashion at the moment. It is a style that is famous for its pastel colours, worn surfaces, pretty floral patterns and flowing curves and shapes. It is a style with a completely handmade look where no two pieces are the same. The fact that imperfections are celebrated in this style means that it is easy to turn your old furniture in too shabby chic masterpieces.

If you want to start decorating and painting your old furniture in this way then there are a couple of things you will need. These are a primer, a big tub of cream paint and smaller tubs of pastel blues and pinks, sand paper, crackle glaze and some floral fabrics and other embellishments such as ribbon and papers.

Vintage or Pre-owned Furniture? Great Idea!

You can call it vintage furniture, pre-owned furniture or antique furniture – whatever you choose to call it, vintage furniture can make a lot of sense. You can get interesting and quirky pieces of furniture that look very different from mass produced furniture, and very often you can get them on the cheap.

Buying vintage furniture is also a more ecologically friendly choice to make. Choosing not to buy new furniture means that there is better utilization and reusing of products that are already in use, and there is lower demand for new furniture which in turn means the cutting down of fewer trees.

How to Refinish Wood Furniture - Sanding

Sanding is one of the most difficult steps in refinishing wood furniture. In order to do it properly, all planning, cutting, and forming should be completed before beginning to use the sand-paper. Sanding is not done to form or shape wood, but to refinish its surface. In no circumstances should sandpaper be used in place of cutting tools.

Kinds of Sandpaper

The term "sandpaper" is essentially a nickname given to a wide variety of abrasives. These abrasives, or "sandpapers," tend to be either very fine or very coarse and are produced by bonding, or gluing, graded sizes of abrasive material to a paper or clock backing.

Painting Your Wardrobes for a New Look

When it comes to home improvements and interior design often you will find that it is the cheaper options that get the best results. That is particularly the case when it comes to painting your furniture. In fact there are a number of significant advantages to painting your furniture over just replacing it with new stuff. Here are the main couple of advantages.

Obviously we are living in a world that has changed financially over the last couple of years. We have gone from splashing the cash whenever we need to using borrowed money to spending in the most affordable ways to get the best out of our money. This means that in the past when you wanted to change the look of your room you simply went out and purchased a new set of furniture with the colour and look you wanted. That is however expensive so a cheaper alternative was needed.

To simply change the look and feel of your bedroom you would be amazed at how some paint can make a difference. By painting the rooms’ walls with one colour and the bedroom furniture with another you can change the whole room more than you ever thought possible. In many cases you can keep the carpet the same although it is important to make sure you pick the right colours.

Another great reason to paint furniture is to keep it useful for longer. In a world that is facing some tough environmental issues it is important to keep everything as long as we can and furniture is one way we can make a real impact. The longer you keep each item of furniture in your home the lower the demand to cut down more trees. While you may think that it is only a sideboard or a wardrobe when you consider how many people there are in the world you can quickly see how it can make a difference if everyone on the planet did the same.