What takes two hours to make look new and six hours to make look old again? No, it's not a bad joke... It was my own experience transforming this antique desk into an aesthetically-pleasing piece of furniture.
As you'll see on the inspiration board at the bottom of this post, just about anything wooden can be distressed. You can distress desks, chests, dressers, tables, picture frames, and chairs... The sky's the limit! Distressing a piece of furniture is quite a bit of work, but it gives the piece of furniture a well-worn look that would otherwise take 50 to 100 years to accomplish naturally. When you think about it that way, squeezing a century of weathering into a Saturday crafternoon isn't too shabby!
I think that distressing looks especially lovely on brightly-colored antique finds. Modern colors that "pop" juxtapose beautifully with the vintage feel of antique pieces, as well as with this distressing technique. I picked a bright teal for my desk; not only is it my favorite color (as you may have noticed by now), but it also tied our bedroom together with our ombre dresser and teal-and-brown floral bedding set. Whether you go for bright colors or choose something more muted, here are the steps to get you started!
- a desk or other piece of furniture
- paint (1 qrt) for base "peek through" coat
- paint (1 qrt) for top coat
- paint roller and brushes
- paint tray
- steel wool (grade #00 or #000) and/or sandpaper
- optional: a screwdriver to remove hardware (metal dresser pulls, etc.)
- optional: painter's tape to cover pieces you don't want to paint
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In case you missed this quick tip two weeks ago: put a plastic grocery bag around your paint tray. When you're done painting, simply through out the grocery bag and minimize your clean-up!
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Step 1: Pull out all the drawers, and remove the hardware from each drawer. Given that this project looks awesome on vintage pieces, there's a good chance you'll find yourself with a few old rusty screws that won't come out. No need to fret: you can cover these drawer pulls with painter's tape.
Step 2: Paint your entire piece with the base color. If you want the original wood or existing paint color to "peek through," you're in luck: you can skip this step! If you want the base color to show through as well as the original wood or existing paint color, only paint a single coat. I, however, wanted to ensure that the ugly original color would not show through once I started distressing, so I painted two coats.
Step 3: Paint the entire piece of furniture with the top color. I once again used two coats of paint to ensure the paint job would endure, but I give you fair warning: the thicker the top color of paint, the more challenging it will be to distress!
And then you wait... It may seem totally dry after a few hours, but give it at least 24 hours before you take any steel wool to your prized piece.
Step 4: Now it's time to break out the elbow grease and get distressing! I tried out a few different methods on the back of the desk, some of which worked and some of which looked terrible. I'll tell you about each of them, so you can decide for yourself:
1.) First, I tried a wipe-down method that I read about on-line—while the paint is still wet, you're supposed to wipe down the piece of furniture with a wet rag. I couldn't get this method to work at all. Instead of looking like I had distressed the desk, it just looked like I'd done a shoddy painting job!
2.) Next, I tried a steel wool soap pad, since we already had one in the house, and I wanted to save myself another trip to Ace Hardware. It was a noble idea, but it completely gouged the desk. Good thing I didn't try that one on the front of the desk!
3.) Next, I tried sandpaper. The look was definitely gentler than the steel wool soap pad, but not nearly as gentle as steel wool #00. I decided to use this technique for some parts of the desk.
4.) Last but not least, I tried steel wool #00. This was definitely the highest elbow grease to weathering ratio, but it was worth the extra effort: it created a subtle distressing effect that was impossible with the other methods. The only downside is that it left a bluish-purple residue on the desk. This blended in brilliantly on this blue-green piece and likely wouldn't show up at all on a dark piece, but it would ruin a white or very light-colored piece. If you're using steel wool, be sure to wear gloves! I didn't, and I ended up with tiny cuts all over my hands.
And how do you go about doing the actual distressing? Just put some elbow grease into it (less so if you're using sandpaper), and rub back and forth until you've achieved a look you like. Go heaviest on the corners, medium on the edges, and light on the surfaces—just as a piece of furniture would be likely to be weathered by the elements. I used a combination of steel wool #00 and sandpaper: I used steel wool on the surfaces of the drawers, alternated between steel wool and sandpaper on the edges and corners, and used sandpaper on the desktop.
And that's it! Like I wrote earlier, you can distress just about ANYTHING wooden! Check out these lovely distressed pieces for inspiration:
 top left: BlackSheepMill | top middle: Pretty Handy Girl | top right: rubylanemiddle left: Home Decorators Collection | middle right: RedKoalaArtbottom left: RecyclArt | bottom middle: society6 | bottom right: minthome |
