Master Class. From rags to riches: new life for an old chest. Chest restoration methods How to decorate an old chest

Do you have a chest whose age is no longer taken by anyone? We can say lucky, because our topic today is the restoration of the chest with our own hands. It is still difficult to see a masterpiece of hand-made in this peeling box, but soon our ugly duckling will become a decoration of the house. All it takes is a little skill and good taste. We offer two simple options for the transformation of old furniture.

Once upon a time, English lords and miladies, moving on horseback, carried their belongings in wonderful trunks. There was no Internet at that time, and artisans created things slowly, excelling in the art of decoration. Let's also try to create an English travel chest from an unsightly box, trimmed with an elegant pattern.

• An old chest (if there is none, a wooden box from under some equipment will do).
• Abrasive paper number 1 and 2.
• Masking tape.
• Cardboard and transfer paper.
• Palette.
• Acrylic primer.
• Acrylic putty.
• Acrylic paint kit, including gold acrylic.
• Varnish for craquelure. Decorating a chest with your own hands in vintage style involves applying the effect of artificial aging.
• Oil varnish.
• Template or decal.
• Round synthetic brushes number 2 and 3, as well as wide flats.
• Hole puncher.

First, we wash our chest from age-old dust and soot using a rag, a soft brush, and soapy water. It is not necessary to wet it strongly, the tree does not like this. We dry the surface and clean it with emery cloth to the fullest possible smoothness.

We cover the chest with acrylic primer. After waiting for it to dry, we seal the handles and corner edges of the box with masking tape.

We apply green paint to the primed walls.

After the paint dries, cover with craquelure varnish on top. After drying the varnish, apply a layer of white paint from a spray can.

After 10 minutes, a network of cracks should form. After half an hour, the paint will dry, and the craquelure effect will appear in all its glory. Decorating a chest with your own hands becomes an exciting activity.

If there is no stencil with a beautiful pattern, we translate the drawing through carbon paper. We paint the whole picture (except for unopened buds) with gold acrylic paint.

When the acrylic dries, outline the roses with a gold outline. After drying the contour, paint over it with pink acrylic, then shade the petals with light pink.

We cover the golden contour with craquelure varnish. After keeping the varnish for 30 minutes, we cover the stems, leaves and buds with green acrylic.

Remove tape from corners. Mix putty with green acrylic paint and paint over the edges.

Solving the problem of how to decorate the chest in an original and inexpensive way, we lay rows of confetti cut with a hole punch on wet putty. This will be an imitation of nails fastening the walls of a chest full of treasures. We paint the "nail heads" in gold color. We also tint the metal corners of the box with green acrylic.

After thorough drying of the paint, the chest can be used for its intended purpose: to store various necessary things in it. You can also make an unusual coffee table out of it by screwing furniture rollers to the bottom.

We will turn a box beaten by life into a merchant's chest, in which the maidens once kept their dowry.

• Old wooden chest.
• Leather and fabric.
• Straps or synthetic webbing.
• Figured handles with overlays - 18 pcs.
• Water stain.
• Furniture nails with hats, self-tapping screws.
• Semi-matt parquet varnish.
• PVA glue.

• Screwdriver or screwdriver.
• Drill, metal and nylon brushes to it.
• Furniture stapler.
• A hammer.
• Wide brush.

As in the first case, first we wash the chest from age-old layers. When deciding how to restore the chest beyond recognition, we take a drill with a metal brush attached and methodically clean the surface, removing the old coating along with the top layer of wood.

We process wooden planes with a nylon brush.

We clean the dust with a brush and cover the chest with stain, paying special attention to the processing of protruding elements.

We apply several layers of varnish to the walls.

Cut out circles and stripes from a piece of brown leather to upholster the corners and corner edges of the box. We try on round overlays on corners. We cut out a sector from one edge of the circle and nail the workpiece to the corner with furniture nails. Glue the cut joint with glue.

We impose strips of skin on the ribs of the chest. We fix them with furniture nails, placing the hardware symmetrically.

To give the chest a solid look, we fasten the lining from the furniture handles using self-tapping screws. If there are no self-tapping screws of the desired color, you can paint them with brown paint or nail polish. We have the linings in pairs, on the upper and lower sides of the box.

We drill holes for handles in the side walls of the chest. We fasten the handles with screws.

We cut the belts to limit the cover when tilted. We shoot the ends of the tapes to the inside of the base of the box. We shoot the opposite ends to the lid. Our task is to make sure that when opening the chest, the lid does not fall back, but is kept on tight straps.

We measure the box from the inside. We make a pattern of the interior upholstery. Having sewn it on a typewriter, we put it inside the box. The cover can be nailed with furniture nails along the edges, you can shoot with a stapler.

The restoration of the chest is completed. Looking at this beauty, we ourselves are surprised how we could see the prototype of a magnificent exclusive thing in an old wooden box.

Chest decor

Initially, regardless of the chosen decoration option, the chest must be washed and dried. If necessary, repair, sand, remove old paint.

The second stage is preparation for decoration. The surfaces of the chest can be left with a natural wood texture, or they can be tinted with acrylic paint or stain.

The third stage is decoration. Working in the decoupage technique, I use patterned napkins or special decoupage cards, which I stick on the chest, after which I cover it with varnish or furniture oil.

For hand painting, having chosen a motif, I make a large-scale sketch, mark it with a pencil on the chest and paint it with acrylic, gouache or oil paints. After drying, I protect the painting with varnish.

On the picture:

1. Chest, stained. Metal parts imitate aged copper.

2. Antique wooden chest with metal strips edging after restoration.

3. For this chest, the corner plates are made of sheet brass.

Do-it-yourself restoration of an old chest

The current trend in interior design is the chaotic arrangement of old peasant household items in your house. The old chest is usually settled first as an amulet of future wealth. Unfortunately, almost all chests spent their last years in damp sheds. Because they rusted, faded paint peeled off them. Therefore, choosing a chest for yourself, take that one. whose boards did not rot. Everything else can be restored.

The restoration process begins with cleaning the rarity from dust and dirt inside and out. Then, using a sharp knife and a gas burner, all layers of old paint are manually removed. After a slight warming up, the oil paint becomes soft, like plasticine. The process is very long and thorough, it will take patience.

By the end of the first week, it will be possible to sand all metal elements from rust and proceed to the restoration of tin strips.

Metal was previously used with a thickness of 0.2-0.3 mm. You can't buy such oven tin anywhere now. You can search in old village houses or ferrous metal collection points. We use tin from burnt paint cans. We dissolve the side wall of the jar into strips of the desired width and nail them to the chest with carnations. We restore the corners with the same tin. We make edge corners. When assembling, we use a sharp punch made of steel knitting needles.

The next stage is the manufacture of new hinges from sheet metal 0.5-1 mm thick. It is important to do everything manually, without much precision. The top and bottom of the hinge should be cut with scissors for metal. tap, clean sharp edges and bend with pliers around the nail.

Holes for fastening nails are best drilled, but you can also punch.

We cover the complete chest three times with nitro paint of different colors. The background color is blue.

Inserts - red, yellow.

All iron is painted with a thin artistic brush in a radical black color - also three times. To protect against ingress of drops of paint of other colors, we glue the edges with masking tape.

After complete drying of the front surfaces, the bottom and inside of the chest should be covered with linseed oil and tinted protective impregnation.

Such a restored chest will decorate any corner of a modern home. The main value will be a story about the amount of time spent on its restoration!

RESTORATION OF AN OLD CHEST - VIDEO

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The wooden chest stood for a long time in one of the countless outbuildings of the old log house. Simple, ugly, painted with floor paint of an indistinct color - it did not at all inspire creative exploits. But it awakened sentimental feelings, and I suddenly wanted to see my grandmother's chest settle in the corner of a city apartment, even if without a dowry. At the family council, it was decided to breathe new life into the rare little thing.

I would like to initially note that it is advisable to restore only high-quality products. Good-quality interior items made of valuable species and wooden furniture, like mebel-vek, are recommended to be updated without hesitation. Which, unfortunately, cannot be said about modern creations from chipboard: such an instance is easier to send to the scrap than to waste time and effort on futile attempts to revive the appearance. An old thing, in which the master has invested not only good material, but also a piece of his own soul, deserves a chance for rebirth in order to please more than one generation of owners.

So let's get started.

Instructions for the restoration of a wooden chest

1. Purification

The old coating was removed with a grinder, but not very carefully. Somewhere they left the paint, somewhere, on the contrary, they shuffled harder to emphasize the imperfection of the wooden walls of the chest. Rusted metal parts of the skin were sanded by hand. The old forged nails that dangled in their sockets had to be removed so that the sharp hats could not scratch. Instead, they used modern fasteners.

2. Primer

From the inside and outside, all planes were treated with a primer for wooden surfaces. Let it soak in and dry well.

3. Base coat

Before proceeding to coloring, we decided on the main color and the option for further painting the chest. In our case, it was intended for a children's room for toys, so we decided to depict fabulous landscapes. Used brown acrylic paint. In those places where there were scuffs, the coating was specially laid in one layer so that the wood would shine through.

4. Drawing preparation

We outlined the drawing with a simple pencil. The frames were limited with masking tape to avoid leakage. Acrylic paints Gamma were chosen for a contrasting color finish:

• red - color cadmium red;
• green - color chromium oxide.

5. Drawing

Painted with a thin brush along the previously outlined contours. Small hatching details appeared spontaneously, as did some elements of the plot.

Advice:

The first main rule is to catch the mood!

Second, don't overdo it! Neither with color, nor with a pattern, otherwise a thing with history will turn into a rough remake.

As it dried, they took a dry rough brush and walked it over the drawing, slightly violating the clarity of the lines and giving a slight blur.

6. Varnishing

In our business, only matte invisible varnish is appropriate, because aged surfaces should not shine with a new gloss. We used the water-soluble Tikkurila, it dries quickly and has no smell.

When working with old things, it is important to remember that the main goal of such alterations is not to rejuvenate, but to emphasize the age of the product, respect its history and give it a second life. Grandmother was very pleased that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren use her chest. And I'm glad that I have a grandmother's chest.

Gribanova Irina for the magazine "With Your Hands"

Modern storage systems are reliable and convenient, they are easy to care for. However, many would never exchange a solid old chest made of natural wood for a plastic container.

Old things, memorable from childhood, often live in our homes. And it’s a pity to throw it away, and you can’t attach it to the case - their appearance is so outdated that in the country, where things are usually brought from city apartments, they often have no place. But it is worth showing just a little patience, and the thing will change beyond recognition. For example, this chest was made by the owner's great-grandfather and served the family for a long time. Read about his fate on these pages.

MATERIALS

• self-tapping screws
• old chest
• water-based stain
• figured furniture handles with overlays, 18 pcs
• leather, fabric
• decorative nails
• belts or belt tape
• parquet varnish semi-gloss

INSTRUMENTS

• drill
• a hammer
• wood drill
• furniture stapler
• screwdriver or screwdriver
• nozzles in the form of metal and nylon brushes

Step 1

Clean the chest of dust and dirt. Remove the old metal handles. For further work, use a protective mask and goggles. Remove stubborn old paint with a wire brush attachment. The brush will remove not only the old paint, but also the soft part of the wood, leaving harder streaks. The main thing is to observe the measure: hard wire can change the texture of the surface (this depends on the type of wood and the condition of the wood).

Step 2

Treat the surface cleaned of paint with another nozzle - a special nylon brush. It is also designed to remove the soft part of the wood. And if not for the deeply ingrained paint, this could be limited.

Step 3

Using a wide bristle brush, clean the finished surface from dust. Cover the wood with stain in several layers, separately tinting the protruding parts.

Step 4

Coat the surface of the chest with varnish. Apply several layers.

Step 5

Cut out the leather strips and round overlays to cover the ribs and corners of the chest lid. Try on the overlay, cut off the sector so that it lies on the corner. Secure with furniture nails. Glue the joint with PVA glue.

Step 6

Lay the leather strip over the rib and secure it with furniture nails, spaced evenly apart.

Step 7

As decorative elements, use overlays from metal furniture handles. Screw on the overlays with matching screws, placing them in pairs at the top and bottom corners of the chest.

Step 8

Drill holes in the sides of the chest for furniture handles.

Step 9

In the attics of old rural houses, you can find funny old things that can be used in a modern interior, giving the room a unique charm. Wooden things suffer the most from improper storage. They lose the brightness of the colors of the pattern applied to the cover, the surface of the inner and outer walls. It is very expensive to seek the services of professional restorers.

Do-it-yourself restoration of an old chest is a painstaking process, but very entertaining.

General Repair Actions

There are several ways to give an old chest a new life, but at the very first stage, it is necessary to put the shape of a dried up object in order. If it has dried out so much that it folds or even disassembles into its components, it is necessary to saturate the wood with water. To do this, you need to draw water into the bath and put parts of a wooden object in it for a while. For each type of wood, the time spent in water is individual. Birch and aspen absorb water quickly, oak is much slower. The main thing is not to overexpose the workpieces in water, otherwise they will not be assembled, and the grooves will have to be filed. Restoration of an old chest does not involve such actions.

When assembling, the grooves should be in close contact - this will give a certain rigidity to the structure. If gaps still remain in the grooves, it is necessary to resort to the help of wood glue and small pieces of cotton fabric, which will be needed to securely join the elements of the restored object.

Is the paint peeling and blotchy? It must be removed, but earlier, when creating chests, dyes were used that were absorbed into the top layer of wood. In the new version, it is better to color the chest with a stain or protective impregnation that has a color scheme. To do this, using a planer, you need to thinly remove the top layer. Restoration of an old chest in this way is acceptable if there is no original drawing on it. Such a chest can be simply updated with the help of modern means - impregnations and varnishes.

Save vintage chest drawing

Do-it-yourself restoration of an old chest with the image of a coastline, a deity protecting its family from adversity and adversity, requires a more detailed approach. Bereginya is a bird with a female face, in the Russian epic it can be found under the name Alkonost. The plumage, headdress, beads of this creature have a clear drawing. It will not be possible to restore such a chest in one day.

It is necessary to carefully remove a layer of old varnish, apply a protective impregnation, let it soak in and use acrylic paints with a thin brush to draw all the decorative elements again.

Before varnishing a chest with a restored pattern, you can give it the appearance of aging. You can age the drawing using craquelure varnish, it will give the effect of cracks in the paint. So the old chest will look more believable, but its pattern will become more vivid and distinguishable. Sometimes on the chest you can find a rooster with an outlandish tail; by the number of feathers in the tail, one can judge the antiquity of the genus. It is also not easy to paint this drawing with your own hands, because each line of the tail unit is a branch of the family tree.

With the help of modern materials, a do-it-yourself drawing can be transformed into 3D or give it a light grid of cracks inside the lacquer coating.

Decoupage of a plain chest

Decoupage is one of the areas of modern art for painting on fabric or hard surfaces. In direct translation, this word means to cut. Decoupage of a wood surface can be done using patterns carefully cut out of fabric, gluing them and varnishing them, giving a variety of effects using various compositions. This was decoupage at the very beginning of its development. Drawings on the Internet, reproductions of paintings, a combination of photographs with colorful images of frames can serve as a subject for modern decoration.

Do-it-yourself decoupage can now be done in various ways, including the method of transferring an image from paper to a metal, wooden or other hard surface using special quick-drying solvents.

If you want to get a 3D effect or a vintage version of the design, you must use the appropriate solutions and materials. The pattern will stand out better if the chest is painted, rather than emphasizing the texture of the wood.

Decoupage will help decorate the chest not only with flowers or other patterns on napkins, black and white photographs with a frame available in specialized stores, but also with copied paintings by famous artists, your own photographs, and your favorite drawings from books.

If you want to make decoupage from a book drawing with your own hands, there is no need to spoil the book, just copy the image to a computer (in any convenient way), give it the required size and print it on a printer. When choosing a solvent, you need to pay attention to what type of printer drawings it is intended for - color or black and white.

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