Distressing used furniture


  #1  
Old 09-12-05, 12:08 PM
diff27
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Question Distressing used furniture

Hi.
This is my first attempt at painting any old furntiure, so I could use any help and advice out there. I have two old dressers, they are brown, from when I was a kid .. they are in ok shape, but I am interested in painting them white/off white with a distressed look finish. I have no idea where to start and so I was hoping someone could give me some tips. Thanks!
 
  #2  
Old 09-13-05, 06:34 AM
S
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There's some good info on furniture refinishing here:
http://doityourself.com/woodfinish/index.shtml
There's not a lot of distressers (sp?) around here, but maybe we'll find one in Wood Finishing...
 
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Old 09-13-05, 08:38 AM
K
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There are many methods of achieving a distressed paint job. If you desire the dents and dings found in many distressed paint jobs, you can achieve that with a number of tools (e.g. chains, nails in a sock used to whack the furniture, a group of keys strung together used to whack the furniture--this is really the fun part). Depending on the quality of the finish you have currently and the type of wood you can either simply sand the piece prior to painting or you can fill the grain if open and/or strip to bare wood. If you want to rub back your white paint to show the base coat/stain, then after a light sanding you are ready to go.

There are several techniques to achieve the "rubbed" back look--shoe polish or bees wax will provide a resist so that the top color doesn't stick. Alternatively, you can rub away some of the wet paint during the application process or sand it off in appropriate "worn" areas after it dries.

If you were considering a crackle effect, there are many homemade and proprietary products that will cause your top coat to crackle.

Lastly, when you are finished with your painting, you can glaze the piece with a brown/umber glaze (or gell stain works too) to achieve the tea-stained effect, and use a splatter tool (or toothbrush) to achieve fly-specks. Once finished, the piece should be sealed using poly (unless it receives little use). Alternatively, you can also achieve the tea stained/ aged effect using colored waxes, but then you can't poly it and the wax requires more frequent touch-ups.

I know there are a dozen more techniques, but these are the most frequently used. Good luck, have fun and be sure to test your products/techniques before undertaking this project--you don't want to find out 2 weeks after finishing that certain products are incompatible and cause the finish to lift/peel.
 
 

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