Furniture Antiquing Tutorial

When Austin and I started brainstorming ideas for our new place, I did the obvious: searched my pinterest boards for interior design ideas. I came across this idea for a coffee bar. Given Austin's new obsession with hot tea and all things coffee (but only if freshly ground and brewed in a trendy fresh press of course), I thought this was an adorable, functional idea for our future home. Unlike the example I found on pinterest though, we wanted our coffee bar to be colorful but have some character and not just look painted.


One of my favorite reno/furniture redo blogs, features a lot of thrift store furniture painted and antiqued, giving it new life. After looking at the tutorial on antiquing here, we went out looking the perfect piece to rehab.


We scoured thrift stores looking for a dresser that met our size and height requirements, and found this little gem for $65: 

It was the perfect size and height, in relatively good shape and super cute with tons of character. It said "Zenith Radio" on the inside so we think it used to be a really old media cabinet. The two top doors opened two different ways and the shelves were at two different heights (shown above) which wasn't really practical for us. We removed the top 2 doors, fixed the shelf heights, painted and antiqued it, changed out the hardware, and put baskets on the shelves.


When all was said and done, this is what our sweet little coffee bar looked like (we're still looking for a shelf to hang above it):

Here's our step by step of how we did it:


What you need
-Your furniture piece (of course)
-Drop cloth or newspapers to paint on top of
-Paint/varnish remover (not necessary but will make your life 8 billion times easier)
-Sandpaper (or a sander)
-Primer
-Paint for the base coat
-Glaze (You can buy this in a lot of sizes depending how much glazing you think you'll do in the future. I got a gallon for about $20. It'll last FOREVER. As in we've antiqued 5 pieces and used maybe 3/4 cup of this stuff.)
-Paint for the antiquing (You will not need much of this at all. MAYBE a couple tablespoons. I would use some you already had or buy a $1 paint tester. You'll use maybe 1/10 of it).
-Paintbrush
-Damp rags or paper towels
-Polyurethane (varnish)
-New knobs/pulls if you're changing out the hardware on your piece


What you do
1. First things first: choose your piece. Something that is scratched, stained, etc should be fine as long as it's structurally sound. You're going to sand it down anyway! Then choose a color. We made a Home Depot run and got a bunch of different paint samples and a long, skinny piece of wood that we taped off into 3 inch sections to test all our different color choices. We settled on Krylon spray paint color: Jade.


2. Optional: If your piece has a varnish on it (meaning it's shiny/finished feeling) you probably want to purchase and use varnish remover and use it (just follow manufacturer's instructions). You don't need to do this (we didn't) but it also took us about 4 hours just to sand it down. Your choice. 

3. Remove or tape over hardware. If you're changing out hardware, want to change the knob placement and/or just do not want to reuse the old hardware's screw holes this is the point where you should remove the hard ware and fill in the screw holes with spacle. If you're keeping the hardware the same and you don't want to remove it while you paint, tape it with masking tape.

Removing cabinet doors and hardware.

4. SAND. Sand that puppy down. You want to make sure your piece is sanded enough so that your paint will stick. 

5. Prime. I used Kilz (spray paint) primer.

6. Paint. Like I said, we chose Jade (color) Krylon-brand spray paint. I prefer using spray paint over brushing on paint for a couple reasons. Spray paint gives a more professional look, you don't have to worry about watching your brush strokes, it dries faster, and from my experience the spray paint just sticks better to the furniture.

**The beauty of antiquing is that it's not a huge deal if you have brush strokes or your spray paint coverage is not completely uniform. It gives you instant character while giving you some room to make mistakes.**


7. Make your glaze. Chose your color (you cannot do this step with spray paint). The color we chose was Wild Truffle by Glidden. Mix 1 part paint with 4 parts glaze. I didn't measure it exactly, just eyeballed it. You need less of this mixture than you think you need. I can almost guarantee it. I would start with just 1/4 c. total even for a piece that big.

I got a gallon of the glaze. Don't feel pressured to buy this much! It'll take you forever to use it all.

4 parts glaze, 1 part paint. Mix it up.

8. Antique/Glaze. After you mix up your glaze/paint mixture, simply brush a thin layer on to your piece. You want a thin layer because you are going to wipe most of it off anyway. Make sure to really get into all the crevices and details of the piece. That's how it will look realistically antiqued. I like to work in smaller sections. I usually glaze no more than a square foot at a time. Then just use your barely damp paper towel or rag and wipe off the glaze on the raised surface until you achieve the look you want. You can wipe off as much or as little of the glaze as you want. You can always go back over any areas that are not as antiqued as you want them. Just repeat the brushing on and wiping off.

9. Once you are satisfied with your piece and it fully dries, you can apply a polyurethane/varnish to your piece to give it a more finished look and make it more durable. Just follow directions on the can.


Price breakdown for our coffee bar:
Cabinet: $65
Primer: $4
Spray Paint: $4
New hardware: $2
Baskets: $20
(We already had or used so little of everything else its really not even worth including a price.)
Total: Less than $100


So one more time here is your before/after

Coffee Bar

Before:

After:

Here are a couple more before/after pics of pieces we antiqued. Enjoy!

Coffee table

Before:

After:

Pie Table

Before:

After:

Stools

Before:

After: 

Here are a couple more pictures spotlighting some of my favorite sections of the pieces we've antiqued. See how much character it gives these pieces? This is why you really need to get your glaze mixture into every little crevice...

  

Ok great. Now go get your crafty on!

New Life, New Place

7 months ago. That's when I last posted. Sorry about that. We've had a lot of life changes around here lately.

Since then we've had a 1 year anniversary, worked a lot of hours, taken a few trips, Austin graduated from Clemson, we gave our two-weeks notices, moved back to Hot-lanta (to stay with our parents and job search), Austin got a job, and we just finished moving into an apartment in a different area of Atlanta. I hope to have some new recipes for you soon, but until then enjoy some pics of our new apartment!!

Still on our to do list: put up curtains, get lampshades for living room lamps, and thrift for a living room end table to replace our temporary chair "end table."

Oh well, all that for another day!