Antiquing furniture to give it a distressed look is a great way to revive outdated or worn pieces, as well as achieve character and age newer pieces. Antiquing furniture techniques have improved dramatically over the years On chair, for example, the points of the arms tend to lose some color and the edges tend to round. That is a great antiquing furniture technique to do to a new chair or piece of furniture. Another great antiquing furniture technique is to take a fine-point black marker and create a few specks on the legs or arms of your piece of furniture. The bottom line,  don't go overboard with distressing furniture because too much can be detrimental to the look.

Distressing furniture in the decorative arts is the activity of making a piece of furniture or object appear aged and older, and there are many methods to produce an appearance of age and wear. Distressing is viewed as a refinishing technique although it is the opposite of finishing in a traditional sense. In distressing, the object's finish is intentionally destroyed or manipulated to look less than perfect, such as with sandpaper or paint stripper. For example, the artisan often removes some but not all of the paint, leaving proof of several layers of paint speckled over wood grain underneath. This becomes the "finished" piece.

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The pictures below are of  a door and a cabinet that we antiqued with an antiquing glaze to give them an aged finish.

Click on each picture to enlarge

Do It Yourself

(great resources)

Antiquing a Bench on HGTV

Antiquing & Distressing Video

How to Antique Kitchen Cabinets

Create an Antique Finish with Stain