Veronica Hughes: 5 ways to transform furniture beyond paint

Friday 2 June 2017

5 ways to transform furniture beyond paint

Now that the weather is finally nice outside, it’s a great time to get outside and do some furniture makeovers! Most people think about only painting furniture when they think of upcycling something they own, but there are so many more options. Here are 5 ways to transform furniture beyond just straight painting!

Decoupaging maps on furniture

Decoupage is a great way to update your furniture! It involves using a decoupage medium and a sturdy paper such as scrapbook paper, or vintage maps. Once you get the technique down, you can update almost any surface.

Using scrapbook paper to embellish furniture

You can even take decoupage a step further and decoupage fabric onto an old top. This is a super old project I did, and is still really popular, because it’s an awesome way to rescue a damaged table top. I used it to transform the table below that was completely missing a top!

Table before decoupage

If you use a heavier fabric, and seal it correctly, it makes it even more durable. Even though the transformation of this table is now dated itself, the technique is timeless.

When you are faced with a wood furniture item with dated carved wood accents, you can actually fill those in and paint over the area!

Fill in those carved wood areas to update old wood furniture

You can also add wood embellishments on top of those , if you want to add something fancier.

Furniture can also be transformed by sanding off the old finish, and just waxing the newly exposed wood, like I did recently with our coffee table.

Sanding paint off of a wood table

Even though I love painted furniture, I also really love natural wood sometimes. I was really lucky with this piece that the wood was so gorgeous underneath, and that wax enhanced it so much!

I love doing even bigger transformations by upholstering pieces, and making them into something else.

make a coffee table into an ottoman

This coffee table took on a whole new life as an upholstered ottoman. It was a great way to update it, and still have it be completely functional. The thing about vintage furniture is, even though it’s outdated, with good bones, it doesn’t mean it can’t be brought up to date with 5 ways to transform furnture!! It just means thinking outside of the box a little bit!