Many people are in no hurry to part with old furniture and resort to restoring the cabinet with their own hands. Let's talk about how to do it at home, without financial and physical costs.
Restoring an old wardrobe is a painstaking task, but you can do it yourself. Many houses have old furniture, nicely and comfortably arranged in the family nest. For this reason, people came up with the idea of restoring old things so that they could take on a new look and please for several more years.
Basic tools for converting a closet can be found in every home. If for some reason there are no tools for working with old furniture at home, you can easily buy them in a store.
Before starting work, inspect the location of your furniture, what colors and tones should be selected.
The main advantage of restoration at home is that you don’t have to take the bulky cabinet out of its home. The second advantage is that you can observe the entire process yourself and it’s easy to make any changes. The third advantage, as mentioned above, is that all the tools are easily accessible.
When restoring a cabinet without the help of professionals, you estimate the cost of labor costs, which also has a positive effect on your budget.
In general, only creative people can cope with such work, since it is necessary to select the right tones, shapes, etc. But if you approach the work more responsibly, then perhaps, even without special talent, you can transform your old wardrobe, which has remained necessary for many years.
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Furniture Restoration Styles
- Art Deco
For the design of such decorations, interesting and quite expensive materials are often used, which will last for many years. A distinctive feature of this style are various geometric patterns. Bright colors are used for that interior, which are diluted with lighter and softer tones at the end of the work.
- Decoupage
This style is used mainly only on wooden surfaces. It involves gluing cut out figures and patterns, drawing them if necessary. A common and original method in this style is to use napkins with patterns and fix them with acrylic varnishom in several layers.
- Covering with regular self-adhesive film
The name speaks for itself, various patterns are created using self-adhesive film. Stencils are often used. One of the easiest and most effective ways to restore old wooden surfaces.
- Craquelure
This interesting method, on the contrary, emphasizes the antiquity of your furniture with the help of a special craquelure, which creates cracks on the surface. The main thing in this style is the creation of deeper and wider cracks, for this it is necessary to apply thicker layers.
Let's talk about the last method in more detail.
Wooden cabinets dry out, causing cracks to form. Our job is not to hide them, but rather to add beauty and elegance to the cracks. There is a huge variety of varnishes now. It is up to you to choose the color that suits the interior. Once you have chosen the right color, you need to get ready for work.
If you still doubt whether you have made the right choice in favor of this style, you can experiment on some small wooden things. Only the surface should be wooden and preferably old-fashioned, for a more convincing effect.
Materials for decorating the surface of an old cabinet:
- acrylic paint;
- crackle varnish;
- matte acrylic.
Tools for restoring the cabinet surface:
- brushes (different sizes);
- pieces of fabric without fine lint;
- container for diluting the product.
When purchasing materials, be sure to check their quality. The varnish should be quite liquid. When applying, do not shake the bottle under any circumstances, otherwise subsequent application will be of poor quality if there are bubbles.
Do-it-yourself cabinet restoration consists of the following steps:
- replacement of cabinet fittings;
- cleaning an old cabinet;
- necessary repairs;
- craquelure style decoration.
Step-by-step restoration instructions
We clean the surface of the cabinet from the old coating with sandpaper. Then we cover it with acrylic paint, the color should be such that it matches your interior, it will be the main one. If you want to preserve the color of the cabinet, then apply a transparent layer of paint.
After complete drying, the next layer of coating is crackle varnish. The thicker the layer you apply to the surface of the old cabinet, the wider and brighter the cracks will be. After applying the second layer, the surface should dry thoroughly. You can check how dry the furniture is with your finger, if it sticks slightly, but does not leave marks, the surface is ready.
When applying the second layer of paint, you need to act very quickly and move the brush in one direction. A Soviet wardrobe is covered with one layer. If you decide to create a Venetian layer of plaster, then the paint should be applied with pieces of cloth or a sponge.
After the paint has completely dried, the final layer of varnish is applied, it may already be matte. To quickly dry the surface, you can use a building hair dryer, but it also contributes to the increase of cracks.
The wardrobe decor can be fixed with patterns or pasted over with various fragments from old albums and books. Here, only your imagination and interior will help. The main thing is to approach all the work creatively and then your wardrobe will gain a newer and brighter life. Do not doubt your efforts, boldly get to work and you will definitely be satisfied with the result!
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