Methods To Recreate Rustic Restaurant Furniture From Newer Pieces

By Beryl Dalton


With a little effort, one can make their old kitchen look new by making it, well, look old. The same can be done with that old pool hall the family has owned for more than a generation. It is easy enough to create rustic restaurant furniture, even when the furnishings are relatively new.

Chain restaurants have known for a long time that these techniques can be used in this way. Many chains have a particular style which seems antique to the untrained eye. However, no retail food chain would be able to get a business off the ground if the antiques for every location were real.

Glazing is one method which creates a distressed or antique look to any piece, and is a method commonly used in household kitchens. It is fairly simple to learn, and similar results can be achieved in a large variety of color schemes. As a rule, one will start with a light base coat and utilize a darker earth-tone glaze over that.

Some pieces may even require a primer to avoid bare wood from absorbing the glaze, so be sure to sand lightly any areas of primer which appear glossy. A full base coat will be called for, and this must be allowed to dry completely. The next step is to do a paint and glaze mixture which will be brushed or rolled on and wiped off, allowing the glaze to enter cracks and crevices in the piece.

When antiquing the glaze is wiped off from top to bottom or with the wood grain, taking care to use the same stroke with each swiping. If it is a marbled look that one is going for, then ragging off the paint and glaze mixture will accomplish this. Either way, it is a good idea to do a couple of practice runs before the actual piece in order to see what methods work best.

Taking a hammer, nails, or other devices to create chips and gouges in wood, or deep scratches on metal, can reinforce the distressed look. A newly made book shelf can appear to be over a hundred years old when these distressing techniques are used together. The final step would be making sure all metal pieces are rusted before putting them on.

Rusting any metal hardware helps keep the look uniform with the rest of the furnishings, and unique from other pieces. The lazy approach is to toss a little rust-colored metal paint onto the hinges or locks, and this can work for pieces which do not get looked at close up. However, to truly make rust, one may need to bury the hardware outside for a month or more.

Restaurants often utilize rusting techniques for items such as knives, hammers, hinges, or other metal objects they wish to include in their hanging art. In fact, many old-fashioned style tools are recreated for just this purpose, as hundreds of locations may need these. One trick any do-it-yourself artist can do, using old family photos, is to take prints of these old photographs, then place them in antique frames to make them appear to be from the time period.




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