Older Furniture Is Better Quality
A lot of homes are filled with country, Georgian or Queen Anne vintage style furniture and often these pieces are quickly disregarded when planning a change of style. Sadly, if you bought these twenty years or so ago or inherited them, if you were to try and buy the same style from today’s retail stores, you might find a much poorer quality replacement.
What Type Of Furniture Is Best For An Up-Cycle Transformation?
The type I am talking about is either quality mahogany (often with a rich mahogany red stain or varnish) or pine with either a red mahogany stain or a clear varnish. You might be surprised that the fresh look of french provincial, rustic country or Hampton’s style might be closer to you than you think!
How To Up-Cycle To Perfection
With a lick of a paint in a crisp white you can transform the old stuff into refreshing, expensive looking furniture, anew. How? There are tonnes of DIY tutorials on pinterest.com for paint effects including standing painting, distressing, waxing and chalk paint from devoted serial furniture restorers and up-cyclers.
A lot of up-cycles happen without much or any preparation and that is all thanks to chalk paint like Annie Sloan or good quality ‘no primer required’ acrylic interior paint. The possibilities are endless. You can even scout places like EBAY and GUMTREE for said old quality furniture and apply a new finish. I have also up-cycled brand new pine furniture.
My Hamptons Inspired Upcycle
I scoured ebay and eventually found a buffet that matched my provincial bookcase. Although it is set up in the dining room in these shots, it is used as a dresser and shoe storage in the master bedroom.
It was a standard ugly pine piece BUT I knew it’s potential. It’s heavy and very well made. This is how it turned out.
How Did I Do It?
It wasn’t as hard as you might think! This dresser was a standard edition pine unit with ring pull handles and a clear varnish. I didn’t even take off the varnish! I gave it a very light sand (very lazily) and then painted it with 3 coats of Valspar Calcium White. Then I waxed it with good old, everyday furniture wax. One trick I did was to water down my paint just a little, in order for it to settle smooth and dry. If any spots created lines or dips, I just sanded those down to smooth, then went over them on my next coat. With a paint like Valspar (an interior water based trim paint), you literally cannot go wrong. The paint is so good, that you cannot stuff it up. I then purchased some very nice aged brass knobs from Early Settler but you can try Etsy or eBay for the same. All up, it cost about $100 for the dresser, $16 for the new handles, $12 for the wax and I used about a litre of paint. In dot points:
- Very light sand (200 grit sandpaper) – I did not remove the existing finish.
- 3x coats of Valspar Calcium White (watered down just a little to make the paint ‘glide’) with a quality synthetic paint brush
- Furniture wax and buff
- Installed new handles
How To Spot Quality Furniture
- Look for drawers that are dovetail joined and not stapled/glued.
- Drawers with metal ‘runners’, (not just bare wood on wood.
- Feel for heavy drawers too, when you open the drawer it shouldn’t have side wall thickness of less than 10mm.
- Look for solid and heavy handles and hinges and that the drawers and doors all line up and function without snibbing.
- If you pull the draw out and cannot get it back in easily, don’t bother.
Take a look at some of these examples. By adding a painted finish and changing the hardware, you can have an expensive piece of up-cycled furniture for a fraction of the price of a retail version.
Next on the blog, I will give you links to some of the best places to find old furniture, the best paints and where to source the new hardware.
Check out these examples to get your mind flowing.
