How to Create Authentic Looking Antique and Collectible Home Furnishings
There are so many items that could be used to add a new ‘joie de vive’ to a tired old sitting room or a dingy kitchen. Sterling flatware and hollowware, porcelain dishes and ornaments, picture frames, tables, chairs and cabinets, fabrics and even tin advertising signs can be used to create the look and ambiance of an elegant home filled with antiques.
How to make those sterling flatware and hollowware gifts into antique conversation pieces!
Don’t hide your sterling away in the cabinet or drawer – make it a feature. If you are lucky enough to have an attractive pattern for flatware or some unusual hollowware pieces, this will make for great conversation over the dinner table when you have guests. How can this magic be done? Firstly, wash all of the pieces in âÂ?¦ do not include silver plate in any stage of this process. Purchase small sacks of artist’s utensil cleaner from your local art shop, the bags are small, so you will need a lot of them. Alternatively, find a supplier that sells this product in larger amounts. The sacks contain rubber shavings that look and feel like saw dust; light and fluffy.
Get a large plastic rectangular tray and half fill it with the substance. Place some flatware or small items in the tray; completely submerge them. Leave them for a few days until they are completely black. Remove them from the rubber and take off the blackening (patina) with a rag. Make sure to leave black in all of the crevices, don’t get too vigilant with the cleaning, lest you defeat the object of the process.
Leaving black in all the crevices of the pattern – while the rest of the item is clean and shiny – gives the appearance of a lovely old antique that has been well looked after. The principal for hollowware is the same. Just place rubber around the handles and pattern area for a great new look.
If you think that you bought your sterling from a reputable dealer and it is original and not de-monogrammed and it is even an antique? Keep this in mind. A dealer once said, chortling, in the car park outside of his business – having been asked how old a display item was, “It is as antique as anything else in here.”
It takes a while to figure out how this works exactly: a dealer will take one pattern that is no longer in production by the original manufacturer, but is however, in production by another manufacturer who now owns that plate – and this vagabond will mislead the customer into thinking that they are purchasing the original – but no – alas it is the blackened modern copy, still an original – just circa 2000. This information was gleaned by working for the second largest Tiffany sterling flatware dealer in the United States.
How to make those modern Advertising signs into authentic looking collectibles!
Take down those beautiful clean shiny signs and put them outside in the rain for about a month! No rain? Put them outside and water them daily. After they look pretty rusty and unattractive, bring them back in and wash them. Hang them up. You now have beautiful old collectible advertising signs. If you are thinking of going to an antique mall to buy a genuine collectible advertising sign – think again! Where do you think the information for this little trick came from? An advertising sign dealer who owned booths in antique malls all over Wisconsin was responsible for sharing this little tidbit during an afternoon tete a tete.
How to make your guests feel at home surrounded by the warmth of antique wood decor.
Fashion goes in cycles and if you look at any 60s item you can see the art deco lines. Pelmets were around for decades – and are decidedly Victorian looking when elaborate. (A pelmit is a fancy wooden cover, affixed to the wall that it was once fashionable to place at the top of the curtain and rail). So, take down all your pictures in the room you want to work on. Plan on working on all of the furniture and other lamps or fittings that have wood.
There are several different looks that you can create with your wood. You can use all of them or stick to one throughout. Shabby chic, bash up and strip, paint and sponge, stain and varnish are just some of the things that you can use to create fabulous old furniture.
Some items when stripped have suffered burn damage, or they are just not an attractive wood. Also, some items are just never going to be anything other than plain. So, as with anything else – accentuate and play on that.
With a piece of wooden furniture that is not highly finished, but not suffering from damage and perhaps the wood is plain, make it into a farm object. If it was painted you will be doing quite a bit of work. Buy a can of Nitromors or a similar paint stripping agent. Wear gloves – this material is lethal! If you don’t want to work with this material – which is tedious and a time consuming task, especially when you get to the sanding part – if there is a lot of carving.
The best advice and the easiest way to do this is to take it to a company that has an acid bath and have them dip it. It will be instantly stripped. If it is not bashed up already – beat it with a metal chain. Don’t leave it outside though, it will swell the wood and it will never recover. Having it dipped is an inexpensive process, for example, about $30 for a front door.
Failing the luxury of the acid bath – do the hard work and strip, rub with steel wool and sand it yourself. You will have a beautiful chair either way. If you do dip though, let the item sit out for a few weeks before you treat it or work on it – acid tends to continue coming out for a while. Not putting anything on the wood other than linseed oil is the best as it naturally darkens over the following months. The color it creates is a rich antique yellow.
For the real handy folks there is another process. Similar but reserved for nicer pieces of furniture with a little character, or items that have a stained finish. If you wish to keep the item exactly as it is but it has nicks, use boot polish to color up to the color of the item as a quick inexpensive fix. Alternatively, sand the whole surface down and re-stain it. Do not use varnish with a color stain in it, they streak, no matter how good you are. Stain the surface first with the desired stain color, don’t use a paintbrush; it puts it on far too liberally. Put a small amount on a cloth and apply it to the wood – going with the grain. If there is a chunk out of it, buy wood filler and fill it in before you start the staining process. A good carpenter would use a piece of wood that he had cut to size to fill the hole. But wood filler is suffice. Apply a coat of varnish when you are finished.
Okay so your item is a lovely shape but the wood is so damaged you have to hide it, or it is just a clumsy but practical piece of furniture that you don’t want to get rid of. Here is the solution to that problem: paint the item and then sponge-paint it. Begin by using a water-based paint as an undercoat – if you don’t want to waste money on undercoat and you have left over wall paint tucked away in a cupboard – use that. Using a base paint helps the oil based paint stick and go on evenly without streaking. Don’t scrimp on the brushes. In this case a bad workman rightfully blames his tools. Cheap brushes lose their bristles – they are stiff and just not practical. Apply your base color paint to the item. After you have applied your base color take your sea sponge and dip it into your darkest color of paint for sponging. (Sea sponges are expensive, but nothing else works as well.) Select colors that are similar for a subtle effect also use small dabs of the sponge. Use sharply contrasting colors and heavy dabs of the sponge for a loud perhaps Victorian look. This is fun to do and it can be done to just about anything.
The last wonderful way of adding pizzazz and a bit of panache to your abode is shabby chic. Again, this is ideal for items where the wood is just too far-gone to ever look good. Having reached the part of the process for sponge painting where the undercoat has been put on, creating the shabby chic look can begin. The process when done without additional art is called crackle glazing.
According to Bright Beige, a company set up for those hoping to decorate on a shoestring, “Crackle glazing is surprisingly easy to do,” and the results can be awesome. If you are not a talented painter and are not able to hand paint a center picture – a good short cut is to use an old birthday card or a photo – and make that your centerpiece. You do not need a centerpiece but it enhances the look and it can be whatever theme fits the surroundings.
If you are going to hand paint the centerpiece do it now, or collage it, paste it in now. After you have done this, you can begin the process. The under color should be a sharp contrast to the upper color. Apply the second color – water based paint – blending in the centerpiece. This can even be done with an old trunk – and is a great way to utilize a piece of old junk. When it is dry, apply an even coat of crackle glaze, available from any home dÃ?©cor store in a large jar for about $12. Leave it to dry; it will take about two hours. You will begin to see the cracking fairly quickly. A wonderful effect that creates that vintage look with hardly any effort or expense. If you don’t want the item to look too perfect rub certain areas with sand paper to scruff it up and make it more authentic. Also don’t use too much glaze; it causes bigger cracks the more glaze that you use. Hence, use less of the glaze, especially around the centerpiece for a delicate natural finely crackled look.
By now your home should have undergone a transformation and look sensational, but you are not finished yet. There is still more that you can do! Your porcelain can be soaked in tea so as that the cracks turn brown – creating that old plate of grandmas look. Of coarse, if you have a real old plate and it is stained and needs brightening up because it is so scratched up, soak it in bleach for a few hours. This can be done with all porcelain and china. If you are feeling really adventurous, take a large item and smash it, not to smithereens, but reasonable chunks that you can then super glue back together again and soak in tea for that amazingly authentic old rescued family air loom look. Display any plates on a Welsh dresser, windowsill, picture rail or put them in plate hooks and hang them above doorways.
One of the greatest things to play with is fabric. Find the theme, color and pattern of the fabric you want to use in the room that you are working on. Take a lamp for example, you could have sponged the shade to match the furniture or you could cover the shade with the fabric. Old chairs can be spruced up by taking out the chair, removing the old rotten material and nails or other fastening items. Cut out a piece of fabric and either nail it, staple it, glue it or sew it on. Put the seat back in the chair and that chair you polished has now had the finishing touches and should look spectacular. If you find your upright chair is sprung or has horsehair, try not to interfere with it too much. If you have to replace it and have no funds, use old cut up panty hose for cushion stuffing, they work just great. Also, they are great for making draft excluders. Another thing that you can do, if, for example you are creating a Victorian theme with some cheap velvet you picked up is pull the whole thing with cushions. Match up your curtains, lamp shades, pelmit covers and draft excluders for a plush aesthetically pleasing and balanced environment that encourages your guests to feel relaxed and want to come back again and again.
You may now take on a well-deserved regal pose because your nook should be fit for royalty!
