To "antique" or "distress"? This is the question?

I get quite a few people in the store each week with ideas that they have saved from Pinterest. And by the way I LOVE Pinerest and I do my fair share of scrolling through for ideas and inspiration! 
I think it's wonderful that we can go to a website and see what others have created and feel that we can do the same with a little help. 

If you see a piece of furniture that is similar to your piece at home and the color is something you would like to use in your home, most of the time that can easily be done. One statement that comes up often at Fresh is "I want my buffet, dresser, side table, etc. to be antiqued". 
And my reply is "do you mean you want it to be distressed or antiqued"? And then we continue on in a discussion about what the two words mean in terms of painting furniture. That's where the Pinterest picture comes in or we have several sample boards or pieces of furniture to show the difference to our customers.

A distressed piece is when you remove some of the paint by using a damp cloth (chalk based paints) or you can use a sanding block to distress. Our chalk based paints are softer and easier to distress so we use an old t-shirt dampened with water and gently remove in the areas that we want to have a distressed look. With the harder based paints we use a sanding block.

When "antiquing" a piece of furniture I use a glaze to give it an aged look or to tone the paint down. Glazing adds so much to a piece of furniture. It's one of my favorite furniture applications because it gives the depth that cannot be achieved with just paint.

Here is a picture of a buffet and a pedestal that was distressed with a damp cloth.

And these are some pieces that have been glazed. Which one do you like the best?

We have some exciting new workshops coming up in a few weeks so be sure and keep up with the latest news on Facebook or on our website.

Head Board Turned Bench

I have wanted to make one of these for many years and I finally had what I thought might be the perfect bed to repurpose into a bench. With the help of my husband, we set out to make this Pinterest project a reality. I showed him a few pictures of benches that were made from full size beds and we got started. Our first task at hand was to cut the foot board in half. Most of the directions suggest to cut those pieces from 18-19 inches. This will be the depth of your bench. I measured several benches that I have in my house and most were 18 inches. Here is a picture of the full size bed that I had picked up a few weeks ago and I knew this one was perfect for this project.

After cutting the foot board into with the skill saw, we attached it to the head board with wood screws. These were attached from the back side of the head board. The next step was putting a board across the front to attach the sides. This board is also where the 1x4's will be attached later for the seat. After this was squared and screwed into the sides of the foot board, it was ready for paint. I applied 3 coats of Paint Couture's Angelic. Here's a pic of the painted bench at this point. 

I liked the detail on this bed and I decided to use Light Brown Sugar Glaze by Paint Couture. Glazes are great products to use when you have detail and it gives depth to the piece. I sanded this lightly and then applied the glaze. The next step is cutting the boards for the seat area of the bench. We used 1x4's and after cutting fifteen, we sanded and stained them with a dark brown glaze. We decided that we wanted the boards to extend over the front about a 1/2" and in the back another 1/2".  If you've not used glaze to stain wood, I highly recommend it. The glazes we sell are odor free and clean up with soap and water. They come in several different colors and are very easy to use.

After the wood pieces dried we used the Ryobi power stapler to attach the boards. This part of the project was probably the hardest. Why? The spacing was tricky and it took a lot of time to get them "just right"! If you have any questions about the construction of the bench just leave me a comment and I'll try to answer.

And this is the final pictures of our bench we made from a full size bed. I enjoyed doing this project and I have another bed in storage that may get transformed too! All of the products used in this post were from Fresh Finds, LLC in Jasper. You can visit us from 9-5 everyday except Tuesday's. We also have a store online, that you can visit everyday.