Chance for old furniture: Restore and decorate with your own hands

Restoration of furniture – entertaining process that will bring in your new interior of sophistication and uniqueness. How to restore furniture?

Modern furniture has visually attractive forms, colors and materials, but its service life is not so much. On average, operation continues for 1-2 years more than declared in the document. And sometimes the quality of the goods begins to disappoint the consumer wherever. You know the old Italian tradition, according to which you need to get rid of dilapidated Interior items on New Year’s Eve?

NSthat idea is distinctive and interesting, but irrelevant for «Soviet» of people, «trained» Epoch deficit. We carefully keep grandmother’s dressers in garages and sheds, we store old chairs in attics, put the dilapidated shelves in the hallways and corridors.

What about to give old furniture a full-fledged life? After all, the quality of its items performed «At conscience», Sometimes the characteristics of the most expensive products of world manufacturers!

Where to begin?

Restoration of furniture – the process of time consuming, but exciting, interesting and creative. The abundance of goods for sewing and needlework, provided in the modern market, allows you to restore not only wood furniture, but also of soft materials. And all this can be done at home, do it yourself!

All you need is basic materials for selected decoration techniques, a little imagination, perfection, and of course desire. You can rehabilitate old furniture with painting, painting, decoupage, inlays, modeling. And if you open «second wind» – You can easily come up with how to restore the old «Henced» Furniture, by combination of several workshops.

By the way, skillful designers are closely engaged in the revival of the ancient furniture, realizing their efforts for solid fees. «Rehabilitated» Antique attributes are considered fashionable accessory, and even adorns such luxury hotels as Villa Alessandra in Paris! Perhaps, starting a chest of dusty on the loggia, you will eventually replenish their ranks?

Let’s start! First of all, prepare the surface for your improvisation. Thoroughly determine the copy, remove the old finish from it, if necessary – repaired the product.

Clean furniture from varnish and paint

Restoration of furniture with their own hands traditionally begins with its active preparation for work. First of all, repaired the product if it needs it. After that you will have to remove the remains of paintwork materials from the surface. This can be done in two ways: mechanical and chemical.

Chemical method – the simplest, fast and convenient. To remove stool materials, you just need to apply a certain chemical composition on an instance, and wait a small amount of time.

Such mixtures are suitable as an active element:

• Bakelite varnish;
• Petrol;
• Turpentine;
• White Spirit;
• Ethanol.

Pre-evaluate the condition of the surface and characteristics of the material with which it was covered. Put the rubber gloves, apply the selected solvent for the interior of the thin layer, wait half an hour until the lacquer or paint soften, and remove them using a spatula.

Then rinse the product and appreciate the work. If necessary, repeat all the steps again until the paint is completely removed. The whole process is desirable to exercise outdoors: in the courtyard, garage cooperative or loggia.

The mechanical method is more time-consuming, but an integral stage of the restoration of wood furniture, which can be independent, or additional. As you guessed, it is the essence of it in the mechanical removal of old paint by manual grinding.

It can be carried out using a scraper, cycle, or sandpaper. It is important to take into account that your movements should be routed along the location of wood fibers, otherwise there is a risk of impaired object integrity.

Idea number 1: decorate the chest of drawers

Restoration of old furniture with your own hands can be made by any art technique, but the simplest, and at the same time attractive, has become a decoupage for needlewomen.

Prepare the necessary materials:

• Small wooden chest (pre-cleaned);
• Acrylic paints and acrylic varnish;
• Cutting and drawings for decoupage;
• Cracker (if you wish to give the effect of cracking);
• Oil paint gold or bronze color;
• PVA glue and decoupage glue;
• Sandpaper;
• Scotch;
• Scissors;
• Final coating varnish.

If everything is ready, you can start. The restoration of the old furniture takes place in a few steps:

• Unscrew the handles (if available), treat the prepared surface with acrylic varnish;
• Wait for full lacquer drying, after which cover the visible parts of the locker with gold paint (acrylic);
• Will leavay time again. Stick Scotch bands on the worktop, retreating from the edge of about 5 cm. Cook top center Cover with white or cream acrylic paint, apply crackerel on the sidewalls;
• When everything is dry, remove the scotch and go through «Golden» places with sponge with brown paint. So you get an effect «figured» cracks;
• The ends and a countertop sweeping well with a grainy paper, so that the lation began to penetrate the gold paint;
• Now you can start decoupage. Prepared and cut out motifs (drawings, clippings from magazines / newspapers, posters, prints, reproductions) transfer to the worktop with a soft pile and varnish brush for decoupage;
• Cover the image by two-component crackerur, following the instructions of the manufacturer of a particular brand;
• When cracks are formed, in the most accurately embarrass the bitumen in them, or the dark paint;
• When the chest of drawers completely, cover it with a standard transparent varnish, attach the handles. Your product is ready!

Thinking up the upholstery yourself

It happens that not only wooden furniture, but also a favorite sofa, chair or sofa need repair and restoration. In this case, solid parts may be damaged slightly, and the upholstery – need urgent rehabilitation.

Fabric – Material Material, but more capricious. Restoration of upholstered furniture sometimes requires a professional approach. But if you are confident in your abilities and abilities, you can proceed to it yourself! let’s «Straighten» on a miniature grandmother’s chair.

You need:

• Beautiful decorative fabric (tapestry, jacquard, shenill, tapestry);
• Filler (sintepon, foam rubber, batting);
• Screwdrivers;
• Pliers;
• Dense cardboard for marking and patterns;
• Tailoring centimeter;
• Scissors;
• Ruler;
• Stapler (or hammer with furniture cloves);
• Pencils and chalks for marking.

Step-by-step instruction

Liquid an old decorative fabric and remove the filler using pliers and screwdrivers.

The old upholstery can be used as a pattern, circulating the contours of the seat with a pencil;

• Clean the plywood base of the seat from the residues of glue and the collapsed foam rubber;
• Remove the seat and circle it on a piece of cardboard. Leave several cm for points;
• Cut the template with scissors or stationery knife, then attach to a new filler. Following the circle, cut the foam rubber on the stencil;
• Enclose foam rubber to the top plywood side of the seat. Wait for the fixing element to dry;
• Spread the acquired fabric on the table with an invalid up. Place the seat converted to it with a sparkle to it;
• Generate the edges (allowances) of fabrics on the phaneer, tightly pulling the material;
• Fix by shooting the stapler every 1-2 cm. Watch that there are no large folds between the mounts. Unreliable brackets are better to further bother with a hammer;
• Remove the excess fabric with scissors;
• Your upholstery is ready! It remains only to fix the seat with the help of plates and screws! 

If you drag the old sofa to you until the restoration of antique furniture can be to create for you in creating conventional scenery. Shot pillowcases for sofa pillows from a fabric with a beautiful print, experiment with vintage warehouses, decorate solid surfaces.

Restoration of old interior items – interesting, useful and noble occupation, because the attributes of the past not only keep the memory of ancestors, but also surpass the vast majority of modern products. Return your own fantasy flight and show logical skills! Let the old things in your home acquire a new life, and rightly serve you for a long time.