Don’t get rid of your old furniture. Give them a new youth with these tips for renovating a piece of furniture.
If you understand the whole process, restoring a piece of antique upholstered furniture with your own hands is a fairly simple task and everything is much easier than it seems. However, you still have to work hard. The antique furnishings can not only be renewed, but transformed into beautiful and sophisticated pieces of any interior, give a second life to objects, give them innovations and make them rare design elements.
Upholstered appliances age the fastest because it quickly loses color, the pattern becomes less visible, the fabric is torn, discolored, and rubbed. And when it comes to freshening up the interior, the best solution is to stock up on everything you need and start restoring the old furniture yourself.
Most often, upholstered furnishings only need to tighten the fabric. For this work, you will need a set of keys and screwdrivers, less often hexagons, a sharp knife, and an assembly stapler for the attachment of fabric and other auxiliary tools.
Apply the golden rule of antique upholstered furniture
Change the original structure and appearance of your antique furniture as little as possible. By replacing the finish, you can significantly reduce the value of an antique piece of appliances. If a chair is a little rickety or the varnish of a table flakes, it’s not dramatic.
In order to restore the furniture with your own hands, you must first remove the cloth. To do this, you must perform the following sequence of actions:
Disassemble the fappliance in the elements that make it up;
- Remove large ties
- Remove skin-fixing parts
- Remove the cloth.
When disassembling, it is recommended to carefully monitor the parts to be removed, as they tend to get lost. And then, finding an original replacement for them will probably be difficult. Therefore, you need to pay attention to the old furniture.
After doing the above process in sequence, follow these 7 simple steps to restore your old furnishings:
- Protect the finish without the hassle
Contrary to the claims of sellers of aerosol furniture polish and fresh lemon smell, you don’t need fancy chemicals to clean and protect couches, tables, and chairs, even if they have great value. In fact, these products can often do more damage than anything else.
“Some spray products contain additives that never come off,” says Nancy Rosebrock, head of catering at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. Chemicals mix over time and become insoluble. Many products never dry, retain dust and rush the finish. And all of this can reduce the value of the furniture, she says.
- Protect and clean your wooden furniture
Protect the wood from moisture. Use coasters, wipe drops and avoid cleaning with water.
- Remove dust regularly with a dry cloth.
Once a year, use a piece of furniture, but only if the finish is intact. The paste wax protects the finish without penetrating the wood and prevents dust from getting embedded on the surface, as the car wax makes the water bead on the metal. Choose a wax that is suitable for the color of the wood: for example, a pale shade for maple and a darker for walnut. If the finish has flaked or disappeared, do not use wax. You’ll be surprised to discover the unusual tricks to do with sandpaper.
- Removing scratches
A renovator will certainly want to offer his services, but you can save hundreds of dollars by using inexpensive methods. Get a putty-based pencil or scratch polish at the hardware store. Be sure to respect the hue of the wood. Apply according to the instructions and the trick is played: the scratch is gone, but not your money.
Removing a sticker from a piece of furniture is one of the amazing things you can do with hand sanitizer.
- Steam for nicks
A gash on a wood surface can be repaired using moisture and heat to inflate compressed wood cells to their normal size. Prick the varnish of the notched part in several places to allow moisture to penetrate the wood. Cover the notch with a damp cloth and place a metal bottle cap on the linen to distribute the heat and apply an iron at high temperature for a few minutes. Be careful not to burn the finish. When the wood has become dry again, plug the holes with a thin layer of fresh varnish.
- Firm a sagging lattice
Like all period craftsmen, antique furniture restorers have their own tricks. Here’s one that will save you money when the canning of your rattan chair starts to show signs of sagging. First, make sure your chair is made of a natural material such as rattan or bark and not rush-based paper. If so, turn the chair upside down and wet the underside for a few minutes and pass a clean sponge soaked in hot water. When the bottom is well wet, the top should stay dry, so straighten the chair. When drying, the canning will firm up and return to its shape.
- Repair a frayed chair weave
If you have a wicker-woven chair, you probably know that the strands tend to tear in the front, where the legs rub continuously. Here’s how to quickly do an aesthetic treatment: spread a dash of DIY white glue under the raised fibers and cover with masking tape to hold in place. When the glue is dry, remove the masking tape and no one will notice that the fibers were damaged.
Use a vacuum cleaner’s soft brush to remove dust and dirt that builds up between the strands.
Pass on the braiding a cloth soaked in paint thinner: do a test beforehand on a discrete area to check that the thinner does not damage the finish. With recalcitrant stains, use a green scouring pad on which you have applied a little thinner. To restore luster to the wicker, use a little furniture wax on a dry cloth.
Now that you finished reading this article, don’t hesitate to use these proven DIY tricks!