So you’ve been hoarding a piece of furniture that you swear you’re going to redo to give your space ALL the farmhouse feels?! However, you’re not sure exactly how to get from point A to point B, so it’s been sitting in the corner of the garage and/or moved around for months.
If your husband is anything like mine he has finally threatened to junk it if you don’t actually redo it?!! Look, we all love the vintage, rustic, farmhouse, fixer-upper style furniture and I’m here to tell you that it’s EASY to make it happen.
You will need the following:
- portable hand sander (yes you can use one! They are super easy and if I can use one, so can you)
- sanding disks (I used a 150 grit)
- paint of your choice
- dark walnut stain
- small foam roller
- two cheap paint brushes
Step 1: Sanding
You’re going to want to sand this baby down and depending on if you want to stain or just paint it will depend on how far you’ll need to go with the sanding. If you’d like to stain it like my beauty above you’ll need to sand it down to the wood. If you want to paint the entire thing than you need to sand the shiny sealer off. (Honestly, I almost always just sand it down all of the way)
Step 2: Paint or Stain
For the sake of this tutorial, we’re going to focus on painting in step 2 since that is what will give you the aged look the most. Give it a good two coats with the roller. Here’s a fun little secret... it doesn’t have to be perfect. That is the special beauty of the farmhouse look.
Step 3: Distressing
Take the sanding disk off the portable sander that you just used. Fold that baby in half and do a light hand sanding over the paint. Concentrate on scuffing up the edges the most. What we’re trying to accomplish here is to scuff up the paint the most on the edges which would normally show wear and tear over the years.
Make sure you lightly sand the entire surface that is painted, but on each edge I sand the paint off ever so slightly. It’s not really a science, it just depends how beat up you’d like it to look.
Are you picking up what I’m throwing down? OK good, let’s move on...
Step 4: Adding the Stain
Grab one of those cheap brushes and open up your can of dark walnut stain.
Take an old rag and or paper towels and have them close at hand. Brush on a coat of stain, a small area at a time, over the paint. Working little by little, as soon as you’ve covered the area, grab the rag and wipe the stain off.
Voila — instantly aged! The beauty of the stain is that you can wipe off as much as you want.
I used the distressing technique on all painted areas and then (because i like to change it up) stained the top, two sides, and the drawer, finishing it all off by adding a pretty new knob.
This is the result of this quick and simple farmhouse side table project. Pretty amazing transformation, right? It really took a plain ol' table and created something unique that looks like it not only fits in with my farmhouse feel, but also something that I've had forever.
Now you have no excuses! Go forth and transform that piece of furniture before it ends up as firewood!
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO OF US USING THIS METHOD ON A SHELF!