Look Like You Bought It - Finishing Furniture You Build

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• Filed under: Furniture Finishing Tips

One hurdle that I always find myself in is how to make my recently completed piece of furniture look like it came from a fine furniture store. It has to have fine craftsmanship (tight joints, smooth surfaces, no scratches, etc.). The problem I always seem to have is trying to figure out how to finish it.

There are lots of ways to tackle this, and there are lots of sites devoted to this. The questions you need to ask:

1) What is this piece to be used for?
This becomes pretty important for things like material choice and sealants. If its an outside piece, lacquer or enamel with lots of sanding between coats is a good way to go.

2) What does it need to match to?
For the interior decorator in all of us. Dark stains, light stains, paint colors, fabric decorations. They all come into play. The best bet for stain is to take a piece of scrap wood from the piece you built and stain it to see how the wood will react and look. Some stains play really well with sheathing grade plywood. Some paints work great on MDF, but need lots of work to make them into a mirror finish.

3) How much time do you have?
If you’re keen on getting the piece completed and in use, rather than spending hours on sanding, you may want to invest in some fancy sanding tools, or just figure out a finish that will suffice (we’ll post about this in the future). Lots of the areas of a piece don’t need to be finished as finely as others - a table top needs to be as perfect as possible, but the backsides of the legs don’t need as much attention.

All in all, here are a couple of links that can help get you started:

Painting Furniture

Staining Furniture

Fabrics and Cushions for Woodworking Projects

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• Filed under: Furniture Finishing Tips

We’ve covered the series of how to design your own modern furniture plans, but we haven’t covered an area that really makes it your own.  Actually, there are two areas - upholstery and finishing.  Each one really deserves a ton of posts, but we’ll start slowly.

One of the best things about making something yours is making it yours all the way.  So let’s think on how this works.  Say you’ve already designed (hopefully built) a piece of furniture that you’re really keen on.  Now, how do you tie this into your room, or make your piece stand out?  Do you want to completely cover your project in fabric, or just add highlights like cushions?  Maybe cushions are even too much, and just a dab of really cool fabric will work.

Let’s first talk about the fabric.  What pattern?  A solid color?  Either way, there’s a ton of stuff out there at your local fabric shop, or better yet you can print your own fabric pattern.  This post was a great find - I recommend trying it out.  By making your own fabric, you can make it match other fabric you already have (or try some wallpaper patterns - good inspiration here!)  There are many places to buy fabric outright, such as IKEA, Distinctive Fabrics, and many more.  I’m still big on making your own.

Ok, now you have your fabric.  There’s lots of stuff you could make, but we’ll keep it to a few now and hit some more in the future.  One of the most versatile cushions is shown here.  Its nothing fancy, but take a step back.  Instead of it just being a seat, put some Velcro on the back of it and fasten it to the back of a chair or couch.  Make it any shape you want!  Like with the fabric, use some imagination, and you’ll have something really cool!  The other nice part is that since its held on with Velcro, you can take it off to clean it.

So you don’t want a cushion, but just some more color?  Frank LLoyd Wright had some pretty cool stuff.  In his utilitarian type work, he built much of the furniture for his houses from plywood.  The result was amazing, but he added a twist.  He draped runners over the backs of the chairs.  These runners tied in the furniture with the rest of the surroundings.  Great technique - if you have a picture of this, please send it my way - I’m working from memory here.

I’m very open to suggestions on this topic, so please fee free to add any comments!