Create Your Own Antique Kitchen Furniture

Do you need new kitchen furniture but can’t afford it, especially with the credit crunch and the price of everything going up except your wages? Then perhaps you should consider creating your own antique kitchen furniture by antiquing items yourself.  You could do this with cabinets, cupboards, and kitchen tables and chairs, and its an inexpensive way to furniture that will give your kitchen character.

Antique kitchen furniture will give the room a warm and charismatic look that is unique over the latest modern styles, and you can choose what sort of antiqued furniture you want to go for, as it will be you who is doing the work.  There are two methods of accomplising this, distressing and staining.  You can use them individually, or use both depending on your desired results.

Staining Your Kitchen Furniture

Staining to create antique kitchen furniture will work best on pieces that have a light colour of wood or are lightly stained already.  You can achieve the look with just a pot of dark stain, a sponge or paint brush, and lots of cloths or kitchen towels.  Simply start by applying a light layer of stain to one part of the piece with the brush, and then wipe off the stain to the level that you want, the more you wipe off, the lighter and newer it will look.  It may be a good idea to try the stain you have on a not so noticeable area first, just so you know you are happy with the stain you are using.  Also, remember that you want to try and make the piece of antique kitchen furniture as natural as possible, so apply more stain on areas that are more hard wearing such as around handles, on corners and on the edges of tables for example.

Distressing Your Kitchen Furniture

Distressing kitchen furniture only works if the piece is painted, not stained.  The idea is to make the item look old and worn, to make it look like an antique.  If done right, the method will make the item look tens or even hundreds of years old.

All you need to do this is some sandpaper.  You can get a greater, more refined effect by getting yourself different grades of sandpaper to use on the item.  The idea of distressing is to sand off the finish/paint on the worn areas of the piece of furniture.  So for example, if you were distressing a cabinet, you would sand away at the edges of the drawers and around the door until you get down to the wood underneath.  You can take this as far as you want, you can stick to just distressing the edges and certain areas, or you can go crazy and go all over.

For some finishing touches to your antique kitchen furnture, you can add antique knobs and handles to your finished pieces, making it look truly authentic as an antique.

To read more about kitchen furniture, click here.