subject: Staining Wood Furniture - Distressing And Just A Few Other Helpful Points To Aid Enrich The Overall Look Of The Piece [print this page] Staining Wood Furniture - Distressing And Just A Few Other Helpful Points To Aid Enrich The Overall Look Of The Piece
If you've have a recent stroll through a "regular" furniture store lately (no bare wood furniture in sight), you have possibly observed that many of the more trendy items are "weathered" or "distressed." It's the furniture equivalent of "stone washed jeans."
Sadly, because the distressing is done via machine, there's always a discernable pattern to be found in it, and this, in my mind, makes it almost certainly not worth purchasing.
Currently, most persons who gravitate toward bare wood furniture are independent do-it-yourselfers, and will always be on the lookout for recommendations and ways to help make the results of their hobby much more striking than ever. If you would like to give your furniture a great, really random distressed look, this suggestion might be just what you've been looking for.
Before you get to the step of staining wood furniture, just take a 3'-4' length of chain and work the furniture over with reasonably hard blows. Not excessively hard, as we don't wish to crack anything, but certainly hard enough to leave marks! Distress your bare wood furniture to taste, then sand and stand as normal. The "bruises" and indentations will be differently colored and the overall result will be a rugged, weathered look that is quite appealing.
If the thought of beating the daylights out of your beautiful piece of bare wood furniture gives you the willies, I would suggest practicing on a test board, then staining and noting the results, as there is definitely no taking it back once the deed is done! And if you're still uneasy about using that recommendation, here's one that may be better to your liking.
When sanding in preparation for staining wood furniture, often it happens. As you're bent over the wood, that bead of sweat that was building up on your brow decides it is no longer content there, and splat! Right onto the wood. If you just stain it at this point, you will have a watermark where the stain reacts visibly differently to that spot of the wood, so what to do?
Fine, you can just write it off as a "character mark" and do with it, but if you'd rather reduce its impact, finish sanding and wipe the piece with a tack cloth. Then, wipe the whole piece again, this time with a lightly damp rag. Let dry wholly before proceeding. You might not be able to take the drop of sweat back, but you can minimize its presence with this easy trick.
These are but 2 things you can do before or during the process of staining wood furniture to help enrich the overall look of the piece.
