How To Carry Out An Independent Restoration Of Upholstered And Wooden Furniture

2023 Author: Philip Bishop | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 07:54

• DIY upholstered furniture restoration
• Self-painting and varnishing of wooden furniture parts
• More ideas for converting old furniture

If you understand the whole process, then do-it-yourself furniture restoration is a fairly simple task, and everything is much easier than it seems. However, you still have to work hard. Old furniture can not only be renewed, but turned into beautiful and sophisticated parts of any interior, give objects a second life, give them innovations and make them rare design elements.

DIY upholstered furniture restoration

Upholstered furniture is one of the most rapidly aging, as it quickly loses color, the pattern becomes not so noticeable, the fabric is torn, faded and rubbed off. And when the time comes to freshen up the interior, the best solution is to stock up on everything you need and start restoring old furniture yourself.

Most often, upholstered furniture only needs to tighten the fabric, for this work you will need a set of wrenches and screwdrivers, less often hexagons, a sharp knife and an assembly stapler for fixing the cloth and other auxiliary tools.

In order to restore furniture with your own hands, you must first remove the cloth. To do this, you need to perform the following sequence of actions:

• disassemble furniture into the elements of which it consists;
• remove large fasteners;
• remove the parts fixing the skin;
• remove the cloth.

It is recommended during disassembly to carefully monitor the parts that are being removed, as they tend to get lost. And then finding an original replacement for them will most likely be difficult. Therefore, you should be careful with old furniture.

To update old furniture on your own, you need to select high-quality material to replace the cladding. It should be strong enough with a small but thick pile. You can also use a genuine leather substitute or nubuck.

When cutting a new casing, the removed old fabric should be used as a template. This way you can achieve maximum precision. But you must not forget about the gaps for folds and seams.

Self-painting and varnishing of wooden furniture parts

When it comes to the wooden parts of the product, then most often the restoration of old furniture with your own hands is a repainting or varnishing. It all starts with preparation. To do this, you must disassemble the item, the restoration of which will occur. Individual parts will be easier to work with. After that, you can start preparing the surface.

Before restoring furniture, you need to prepare coarse and fine sandpaper, a few rags and a flat brush.

Remove any old layers that have covered the furniture. For this:

1. The surface is processed with coarse sandpaper. In this case, you need to be careful not to damage the texture.
2. Dust is removed with a brush.
3. Then again there is a processing with a little shoe, but with a more delicate surface.
4. Finally, wipe the product with a damp cloth and leave to dry.

It is necessary to follow these recommendations when processing wooden furniture surfaces:

• Do sandpaper movements only along the fibers;
• Remove dust only with a dry brush, not with a rag, so as not to clog the cracks;
• Perform work in a ventilated area.

Next, you need to prime the surface using acrylic impregnation. The primer can be applied with a roller or brush, depending on the shape and size of the piece of furniture. After covering the product with a base and completely drying, you can proceed to painting.

If it is necessary that the wood texture is visible, then one layer of diluted paint must be applied. And if you need to achieve the effect of factory painting, you need to apply several even layers (depending on the density and nature of the selected paint).

After staining, leave the furniture until the paint dries.

To complete the independent renovation of furniture, you need to varnish the parts. The varnish is applied with a roller, but better with a spray gun. When picking up acrylic varnish in a sponge, you need to squeeze out the foam rubber a little and evenly treat the surface with it. This procedure can be repeated several times.

More ideas for converting old furniture

There are many ideas for hand-made furniture restoration, the most famous techniques are:

Decoupage is a simple and undemanding technique for the performer in order to independently restore wooden furniture. You will need napkins or paper with a pattern, PVA glue, a brush and acrylic varnish. The drawing is cut out, and then glued to the surface of the product, and then opened with varnish

• Shabby chic, a technique of artificial aging of a wooden surface. The tree is covered with dark paint and allowed to dry, then rubbed with paraffin and a layer of laundry soap is applied with a brush. After that, a layer of light paint is applied. Finally, abrasions are made using sandpaper, and the furniture is varnished.
• Craquelure - also gives the effect of aging, but is an easier way. This requires a special varnish that simulates cracks in the wood. There are two types of craquelure: two-step and one-step. With a one-step craquelure, two layers of paint of different colors are applied, and between them a layer of special craquelure varnish with drying. In the two-step method, two types of varnish are applied with intermediate drying.

In the end, nothing prevents you from simply taking brushes, turning on your imagination and decorating the furniture with acrylic paints, as all family members will like.