A New Way to Make Tacky Furniture Look Antique

Antiques are beautiful, priceless pieces that can sometimes almost seem like artwork. A good piece of antique furniture can truly pull the look of a room together. Older pieces just have more character. They’ve seen a lot of life, and you can tell by the ancient paint and subtle scratch marks. Antique furniture shows that you enjoy a deep relationship with history and like to find comfort in classic items. However, what happens when you can’t afford to splurge on a historic piece of antique French furniture? Let’s face it, you don’t always have the money to buy a true antique piece. Besides that, you might have a few uninspired pieces of furniture that just aren’t doing it for you. Why not combine your love for the antique look and your need to renovate your current tacky furniture?

3 Fun Methods of Antiquing Furniture To Put a Part Of Your Personality Into a Room

So how can you start antiquing furniture in order to make a piece of regular furniture look older? There are several different ways that you can go about this. You might have to try each style on a sample piece of spare wood in order to check which method of distressing furniture you like the look of the most. This can also help you practice the method so that your finished product looks that much better.

Method 1. – How To Antique Paint Furniture with Glaze

One of the easiest ways is probably to buy a specialized glaze that is designed for the process.

This glaze works by adding a contrasting color to a clean piece of furniture. This glaze dries more quickly than just paint. Use a rag, preferably one that won’t stick to the glaze and leave bits of fabric or fuzz stuck to it, to wipe away the excess glaze in the direction of the wood. Wipe it off of flat surfaces first, saving the last wiping for parts of the furniture that you really want to highlight. The last parts that have been wiped off will have the most glaze left on them, which means that part with look as though it has collected a little antique-looking dirty parts along its lifetime.

Remember, this glaze is made to make your furniture look antique, but you do still have to follow the directions in order for it to work.

Method 2 – How To Antique Paint Furniture with Paint

However, if you want to truly personalize the work, try this method instead. Thoroughly clean and sand the furniture, then remove any dust that the sanding caused. It’s important that you remove any particles of dirt or dust from the piece so that you get a clean first coat. Otherwise the furniture will look cheap and homemade, not like an expensive antique. Paint your piece of furniture with a base coat that is light in color. Try white, beige, tan or a very pale yellow. Wait until this coat has dried completely, then paint another coat on, this time in a darker shade.

Depending on the piece and your preferences, you can use olive, burnt umber or just a darker shade of brown. Remember to keep it a natural shade. Before this coat dries completely, wipe it off with a rag that won’t leave any fuzzy pieces stuck to the paint. Allow some of the top coat to stay on the furniture in a natural pattern. Let it get stuck in cracks or corner pieces. As you’re wiping the furniture down, allow a natural streaking pattern to form. If you do it correctly, it should look very professional and expensive.

Method 3 – How To Antique Paint Furniture with Shoe Polish

Another method is to use shoe polish. This way can get very messy or can rub off in the future if not coated afterward, so be careful when choosing this method of antiquing furniture. It starts off very much the same as the other personalized method of antiquing furniture. Paint a base coat, perhaps a medium-dark color such as a brownish red. Allow this to dry. Then, smear a bit of shoe polish onto each side. Work it back and forth onto all sides and edges of the furniture.

Make sure you use a very natural pattern that looks like how dirt would settle into a piece of antique furniture. Afterward when you are happy with the result, let the piece dry even longer and the cover it with a protective coat to prevent the shoe polish from rubbing off on other things. This way allows you to rework the shoe polish in order to create the look that you like the best. It can get very messy, but it should be fine as long as you remember to put a clear coat in top of the shoe polish after you finish.

Good luck with antiquing furniture!

You’re bound to have fun, and you’ll likely end up with a “new” piece of furniture that tells a story… even if that story is about how you painted it to look antique. Try to match your colors with the room you intend to decorate so that everything complements everything else. You can certainly use your antiquing furniture skills to create a piece of furniture that can bring a room together and add something unique.