Ageing and distressing furniture

If, like me, you have a passion for antiques, yet are rarely able to afford them, all is not lost.  Have you ever admired your neighbour’s 18th century chest of drawers or bedside table and wished that you had a similar piece of furniture but knew that it would be way beyond your budget? You love how the paint on the piece looks aged and flaky which makes it look so much more attractive, and how your neighbour has cleverly placed some eye-catching Victorian perfume bottles on the chest just to complete the look. Well you’d be surprised to know that your neighbour’s ‘antique’ may in fact be a clever imitation.  It could well be a piece that was bought in a cheap furniture shop such as IKEA and has been aged artificially using one of a number of ingenious ageing furniture techniques that are straight-forward, simple and can be done by anyone.

Ingenious
Today painters and decorators are increasingly showing great interest in this look and have devised various ingenious techniques for artificially ageing new paint work.  What’s more, the aged effect can look so authentic that it often adds to the value of the piece.

Crackle
The first technique is the crackle technique.
This elegant effect stimulates the fine crackling seen in the varnish of old paintings or on old base coats. The result is often the result of age and of stress causes by humidity or of incompatible mediums.
- Sand the surface of the furniture and apply a water-based colour over the entire surface area. Allow to dry for 24 hours. Once dry, apply a thick coat of wallpaper paste and gum arabic and leave it to dry.
- Apply a coat of white latex or other desired light colour over the paste mixture
- Once this coat has been applied, dry the whole area with a hair dryer on maximum heat. Cracking should appear quite quickly.
- Mix a small amount of raw sienna and raw umber acrylic paint with a little water and paint over the surface, making sure it gets into the cracks.

Distressing
The second technique is distressing paint work on furniture.
-Firstly apply onto your piece matt paint in the colour of your choice. Brush in the direction of the wood grain. It’s not necessary to have a perfect finish as you are creating a distressed look.
-Secondly, apply furniture wax with a clean, dry cloth. Apply a thin uniform layer and gently remove any excess with the cloth. If you desire, you may wish to cover the entire surface with the paste wax allowing you to sand more area and achieve a more distressed final appearance.  For limited areas of distressing, apply the wax only to those areas at you plan to distress.  Allow the wax to dry thoroughly, about an hour. 
-Now apply a wood glaze in the colour of your choice.  Brush on in the same direction as the grain again. Don’t worry about applying the glaze perfectly. Allow to dry overnight but it is not recommended to allow it to dry longer than 24 hours before sanding.
-Using your choice of sandpaper, sand to remove random areas of the wood glaze, revealing the matt colour underneath.  The final appearance of your distressed finish will depend on the sanding technique and the type of wood being finished.
-For an authentic look, apply more pressure in areas that would naturally wear first such as edges of drawers, furniture legs and around drawer handles etc.  Remove excess sanding dust with a dry cloth.
-Experiment with different grades of sandpaper ranging from 100 (course) to 220 (fine) to get the desired appearance.  Coarser grit sandpaper will result in more distressing while finer paper will remove less glaze leaving a smoother appearance.

Interesting facts
Distressed or aged painted furniture is actually very usual in original 18th or 19th century furniture. This is a naturally occurring process resulting from exposure