subject: A Facelift For Your Furniture [print this page] When you have furniture that needs some TLC, one of the best things you can do for it is restore or refinish it. This is sometimes the case when you have antique furniture, maybe from a grandparent or relative that might have been forgotten about in an attic somewhere. Keeping its antique style is still possible even if you decide to take this route with your furniture. However, there is a difference between restoring something and refinishing it.
If you restore something, you return it to its original condition. This can include replacing missing or broken pieces such as drawers, trim, doors or any other original hardware. Restoring a piece of furniture also includes repairing things like burn marks, cracks, loose joints or worn out joints. The act of restoring something doesn't even have to be that in depth it can simply include adding on a coat of wax or a good thorough cleaning. There is a lot of wear and tear that furniture goes through over the course of a couple decades. Restoring doesn't take away the character of that piece of furniture, it just brightens it up.
Refinishing a piece of furniture is actually one of the steps you take in restoring it. This is when you strip off or remove the old finish and replace it with new finish that matches the age of the furniture and what it is being used for. This is usually the case with wood, as it is one of the materials that takes the most beating over the years.
If you don't have any old pieces of furniture to restore but it is something you like to do in your free time, take a trip to an antique furniture store to see if there is anything you can take home with you and fix up. Bringing a piece of furniture back to its original state is something fun and interesting to do. Old furniture tells a story and you have to dig away at the layers to get to it.
