How To Antique-Glaze Furniture

I recently downloaded and read the Altar’d How To Paint Furniture Guide and was all set to glaze my coffee table (part of our Living Room Mini Makover)…only I couldn’t find the highly-recommended Ralph Lauren Glaze up here in Canada. Not anywhere. Apparently Home Depot replaced RL with Martha – who doesn’t have any glaze type products. Anyway, after spending an entire morning emailing and calling RL and every Home Depot/Rona/Lowes and every other paint store in the area, I finally realized I was going to have to make this up myself.

I went to Home Depot and bought a quart of Behr’s Faux Glaze. Now it’s really meant for all those crazy faux finishes that people put on their walls like marble and ragging, etc. but I was going to use it, mixed with a little paint, to antique my coffee table. After watching this youtube video, I bought a sample size of a really nice chocolate colour called Sweet Molasses. As Pat recommends I mixed 1 part water with 1 part glaze with 1 part paint into a Tupperware container. It seemed kind of thick for a glaze. But hey, what do I know. And, uh, that looks awfully dark.

I decided to try again. While dear hubby repainted the section white (I so love that man!), I mixed up some new glaze. A lighter paint colour was necessary. I dug out some leftover Behr accent wall paint called Stepping Stones. This time I mixed 2 parts water, 1 part paint, and 5 parts glaze. Much better.

Here is the step-by-step:

1. Distress any areas you’d like with fine sand paper. Wipe away the sawdust.
2. Dip a clean brush (I used a Purdy) into the glaze mixture, wiping excess glaze off onto the sides of the container.
3. Lightly brush glaze into grooves and depressions first and then onto flat surfaces. Only work in a small area at a time as the glaze dries very quickly.
4. Using a clean lint free rag (I actually used paper towel type rags that are sold in the paint department) wipe away the excess glaze. Wipe until you get a look you like. If necessary add more glaze with the brush and wipe again.
5. If you end up with more glaze that you’d like or you’d like to lighten a particular area, wipe with a baby wipe (totally awesome to have on hand even if you don’t have babies). This is my secret weapon. The wipes made the job much easier and stress free because they would wipe away even slightly dried on glaze.
6. Repeat the steps above until you have completed your piece.

That’s it. If you’d like you can spray on a polycrylic that won’t yellow the piece. I just left the table as is for now. We’ll see how it ages. I plan to use the exact same process to antique the buffet and hutch we’re working on. Watch for that post soon.

Here is the before and after of the coffee table.

What do you think? Are you up for antiquing something soon?

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