How to Antique Furniture In Our Furniture Workshop

How to antique furniture with easy methods

How to antique furniture DIY way. But why..? Because antique furniture, the genuine one, can cost an outstanding amount of price. This is reasonable because those products are very rare, perhaps it’s only left a few pieces in the world. The original design and amazing craftsmanship are also points why those pieces of antique cost very high. But…reproductions of an antique furniture style can solve this problem for limited budget buyers.

Some furniture manufacturers make an exact copy from the original, some only take the idea and design and then develop their own products. Whatever it is, they must have the antique looks and feels of the original. Antique furniture must have defects, they must have dents, chips, and perhaps hair cracks.

They have been used for many many years so this is natural. Antique restoration won’t cover this defect because this is also a selling point, they tell their stories through their “dents”, so…we must also imitate those defects, this is several ways how to antique furniture in our workshop.

Making Dents And Cracks

These are not ordinary dents and cracks, they had to be in the right place and the right size. We must think that on normal daily use, furniture will get bumps or scratches only on a particular area. Corners are the most common area to get defects, so there we will work on our tools.

We use various tools to make defects, flat hammers to make wall bumps dent, a Phillips head screwdriver, a slab of bicycle chains to imitate rocks dents, steel wire brush to make aged wood grain, and many more. Sound pretty rough right? but not really, it was done by experienced workers who know very well how to antique furniture using these unusual tools.

We rarely make a crack on antique furniture, but when we need those cracks, we use small nails and thin chisels to make one. This “cracking” process is only done by an expert carpenter, otherwise, heavy damage or bad cracking is what we get.

How To Distressed Paint

Distressed paint can be done in several ways, but most that we use is sandpaper. this is the step on how to antique furniture by distressing using sandpaper :

1. We have to apply a base color to become the primary color of our distressed painted furniture. We try to imitate original furniture that’s been repainted once or twice in its life and have defected by normal daily use.

2. After the first layer of paint is done, carefully sand the painted furniture on the most exposed part during normal daily use, Let’s imagine the corner of a tabletop, or the seat edge on the dining chair maybe, Those are the part that the paint will peel faster than other parts of the furniture. Use your imagination on how much you want to sand away the paint from the furniture,

3. After you are satisfied enough, apply the second layer of paint, let’s be creative by adding a different color from the base or primary colors. after the second layer is dried, repeat sanding on the particular parts of the furniture just like the first step. You can reach out to different areas to add more rustic feels to the furniture.

4. Repeat the process with different colors and the same technique as the first and second processes. To make your life easier use a hand sander machine with smooth sandpaper ( no 240 or more ) to get a smooth and natural look. Use the front edge of the hand sanding machine to imitate natural paint defects

5. Seal them off with polyurethane wax or clear satin topcoat and you are done.

we wrote this distressed paint article on our other site, here is the link on how to distressed paint with sandpaper

Take Advantage of Glaze

Glazed paint material can make a huge difference between successful furniture reproduction and the failed one. we apply glaze on carving, corners, and some detail that we think it’s best to have. We are pretty satisfied with our work this time, but we keep developing much better techniques and skills to improve the quality of our products.

Thank you for being here and have your thoughts and idea in the comment sections below. best regards from Indonesian furniture makers.