Dev Motel Resources and Information

Archive for the ‘Painting Furniture’ Category

Workplaces when most homes used wallpaper on walls. Today, painting is a lot more popular. There is a vast number of painting techniques that maintain your paint and walls from looking boring plus adding practical use. One paint product that’s becoming more popular is chalkboard paint. This paint will turn any wall right chalkboard; pretty self-explanatory right? It’s easy enough really, paint your wall using this paint, put it to use being a chalkboard, then when you’re done writing, erase it you need to over. How fun is!

Children love this kind of paint within their room. You’ll be able to paint a part of an wall by using paint and let your kid’s artistic side run wild. As long as they wish to change it out, merely erase it and create again. This can be wonderful for play time fun. They could play school, they will draw animals and play zoo, the one limits is your child’s imagination. Another nice benefit from creating a wall to a chalkboard is giving your children a suitable wall to markup. Many parents have seen the idle hands of a child marking up a wall with crayons or markers. You will want to let them have a wall which they can draw anything they really want without obtaining it trouble?

Another popular room due to this method of paint is the most used room in many homes; your kitchen. And also the of your home is an ideal spot for a come up with a component of wall right chalkboard. This tends to work as the family message center where you could leave 1 another notes about things to be practiced, or maybe an adorable message to be seen one another’s day

Businesses might also use chalkboard paint as a spot for a leave notes and messages. Restaurants and stores can list specials, and then erase and write a because they change. You’ll often see chalkboards hanging in small cafes used his or her menu boards. Why not make it simpler and more unique by developing your entire wall a menu board on this amazing paint?

The painting put in at home to complete, red or white wine the wall is smooth first; this is certainly critical. Use tape to mark the vicinity you wish to be became a chalkboard and employ a roller in order to apply a few coats in the paint. Enable the paint to dry for a vacation before use. Once it’s dry, use chalk to hide your entire area, then erase the chalk and it’s ready to be put make use of.

How To Refinish Wood Furniture

Solid wood furniture often holds a special place in our homes and lives because it is so durable and beautiful and can easily be passed down from one generation to the next. Well built solid wood furniture is harder to come by these days and often costs a small fortune when bought new. More and more people are finding and buying older pieces of furniture and refinishing them to bring them back to their former glory.

The process of taking and old piece of wooden furniture that has been neglected or forgotten and restoring it to a beautiful piece of furniture can be time consuming and frustrating at times, but it can also be incredibly rewarding when you’re done. Here are the general steps required in refinishing a piece of wooden furniture:

1. Pick a piece of furniture – The first step is obviously having a piece of furniture to refinish. If it is the first time you have tried such a project it should probably be something relatively simple in design and without a lot of ornate decorations. You may also want to avoid trying your hand at refinishing priceless antiques and furniture that is in need of extensive repair. A simple chest of drawers or a single chair is a good start. Assess the piece of furniture and make sure it is mostly sturdy and able to be refinished. A flea market or large garage sale is sometimes the perfect place to find old dressers or toyboxes that have been painted over but are just waiting to be refinished.

2. Removing the finish – Now that you have a piece of furniture you’ll want to remove the existing finish. Often this finish is paint and it can be removed several ways. Using a chemical paint stripper that is made exclusively for wood is a good start, but you’ll also need a lot of elbow grease, some steel brushes and a paint scraper to really get that paint off. This is sometimes the most time consuming part of the entire job. Once you begin to remove the finish you should try to identify what type of wood your furniture is made out of because that may affect how you sand and even how you ultimately refinish the piece.

3. Sanding – Once the majority of the previous finish has been removed from every square inch of your piece of furniture you can begin sanding it. Typically you sand with a lower grade grit (lower number, rougher sanding) and move up to higher grades. Yes, you will sand the same piece multiple times. First you may go over a piece of furniture with an 80 grit piece of paper and then you may go over it again with a 120 grit sandpaper and then you may go over it a third time with a 220 grit sand paper. The “grit” refers to how many grits of sand are in a square inch of the paper. The higher the grit the smaller the sand grits and the smoother the sanding job. You sand a piece of wooden furniture for several reasons. You are removing any excess finish and you are also preparing the wood for the next finish. Be careful about over sanding! Some stains and finishes actually have a hard time adhering to a wood surface that it too smooth.

4. Repair – Once you’re done sanding you should check the piece over and make any structural repairs if they are needed. Check dovetail joints to make sure they are tight and consider replacing any metal hardware if it is not functioning properly or could damage the wood of the furniture.

5. Finish – Finally, you can now apply a finish to your new piece of furniture! There are several different options for staining from water based to oil based to Gel stains. They all have advantages and disadvantages and the stain you choose may depend upon the type of wood you’re working with and refinishing. After applying several coats of stain you’ll then want to add a protecting coat which will also depend up the type of wood and the type of stain you are using.

The process of refinishing a piece of wood, no matter how large or how small, is a long one which often requires a lot of patience, a little bit of creativity and a fair bit of persistance. Many people find that once they’ve refinished one piece of furniture that they can’t wait to find the next piece of wooden furniture to fix up and refinish!

Choosing Contemporary Furniture

Everyone is too busy. In hectic routines, the surroundings have to be contemporary and motivating. One major thing is the size of the area you work or live in. Most people in London do not care about the outlook and just want to have their own requirements fulfilled. As a businessman wants more racks in his office to place files, he will just order one and fill another corner, giving his office a stuffy look. Adding contemporary furniture does not solve your problems, wise management does!

Contemporary furniture will only fit into a room which is contemporary in its overall feel. Due to the simple nature of contemporary interior design, each element of the room is of great importance. Furniture, when chosen and used correctly, can often be the defining feature of a room. How you choose it is clearly very important.

Because there area many different manufacturers like IKEA who are aiming to provide their customers with high quality contemporary furniture which are also low priced you can find many different sets in a reasonable price range. Price is not going to be a limiting factor when it comes to redecorating your home with contemporary furniture. Choosing contemporary materials and a color scheme which best suites your state of mind will make your design long lasting and please your eye for many years to come.

It will help save you money. Even if you think that now is not the right time to invest on this furniture, in the long run you may need to shed off some cash for these items. If you will buy contemporary furniture now, you may still use it once you renovate the look of your home in the future. This will be a lot of cost savings on your part thinking that you do not need to spend for another set of home furnishing later on.

Look at the paint you have used for your home’s walls. Since most contemporary furniture will be set inside your home, you need to consider the paint colour of your walls. It is easy to choose furniture pieces if you have not placed paint on your walls yet. If you already have an existing paint, then it is best to buy contemporary furnishings that will blend with that colour. Otherwise, you may need to spend an amount of cash to redo the paint in your entire residence.

Size Matters You can follow in our ancestors’ footsteps by assessing the needs of your room first so you know what to buy. You also want to balance pieces in your room by visual weight and size, taking the dimensions of the room into consideration as well. For example, if you’d like to purchase new seating areas in a smaller living room, consider two smaller sofas, or a collection of love seats and chairs instead of a massive sofa and nothing else.

Keep scale in mind when choosing the right pieces for your room. Picture the size of your room and take measurements to make sure you won’t choose a piece that is too large for the space. Consider moving your sofa to a diagonal position to make room for a sofa table or separate sectional sofas with a low table.

Shopping contemporary furniture online enhances customers buying selection. You get an unlimited selection to choose from during online shopping. You don’t have any added pressure or nagging of a sales person rather you can shop at your own comfort and privacy. In addition, as a potential buyer you can shop around, searching for the best possible discount rates and other related offers.

Modern look entails a non-clutter atmosphere with everything in right places and neatly arranged. Big and heavy curtains are outmoded with the convenience of Roman blinds and stylish fabrics available in more modern patterns. Wooden table furniture with carvings belongs to the ancient times. Replace them with glass tables or a combination of glass and wood. Have your furniture in minimal carving designs or no carvings at all.

How a Madison Painter Can Help You Choose the Right Color for your Madison Painting Job

Picking the right paint color can be one of the most difficult tasks a homeowner faces. Working with a new home builder for 10 years, I have seen knockdown, drag out fights between couples who can’t agree on the color to paint the wall in the dining room. It can be a paralyzing decision when you consider the time, money and effort you put into painting, only to discover it is not the color you had in mind.

How do you get over this fear and choose the color or colors that are right for you? Knowledge! Do some homework to figure out what colors you like and what tone you want for the room you are painting.

First, why are you painting? If you are painting your home to sell, then you will want to stay with neutral colors that will appeal to a broader public. Painting with bold or unusual colors, may give the room some pizzazz, but will appeal only to those with the same taste in color. This will reduce the marketability of your home. Stay with the traditional beiges, whites and pale colors. Pick colors that are middle-of-the-road. People can look past the neutral and see what they want to do with the home. They will have a hard time picturing themselves living with that bright red wall in the living room.

If you are going to be staying in your home for the next 3 to 5 years, you may want to add some color to your rooms. You may want to consider hiring an interior decorator if you have the means to do so. They can give you some combinations of color that you may never have considered. If you have hired a professional painter or are looking to do so, ask them what designers they have worked with and who they would choose if they were doing their own home. When we ran into a couple that had a hard time making decisions, we usually brought in a professional interior designer to referee. I can’t think of one case that didn’t end up thrilled with the results.

Using an interior decorator or not, take a look at the flow of the house. Do you want the rooms to flow together, or are they stand alone? Do you have furniture, wood floors or a fireplace face to match? Is your room too large, too small, ceiling to low or too high? Do you have a chair rail? Do you want to add a different dimension in the room? Do you want all one color, or do you want to have a two-tone effect? Do you want a textured effect on the wall? There are lots of things to consider before you even begin to pick out the wall color.

Picking out paint colors today is easier than it’s ever been. Many of the major paint suppliers have great programs that allow you to upload a picture of your room and try out different colors and trims on them. This is a great way to figure out your color preference. There are tons of pictures and color schemes online that you can look at before you even go to the store. Do some homework, and educate yourself to the colors that go together.

Another great tool is the color wheel. By choosing colors on opposite sides of the wheel, you can make a dramatic statement. By choosing colors close to each other on the wheel, you can create a more harmonious effect. By choosing different hues within a color you will get a monochromatic color scheme which will give an even flow to the color in the room.

If you have a room feature, furniture or a rug that you are decorating around, you can start by seeing where that feature is on the color wheel. Then look at colors near it and directly across the color wheel from it. This is a good place to start to look at paint samples.

Next, go to the paint store and bring home as many samples as you need. Picking colors can be a difficult decision and one that you want to make sure that you look at carefully. Once you have decided on what color samples you like, ask for a sample of the paint. There may be a minimal charge, but this is well worth the cost. Bring it home and paint it on as big of a poster board as you can, and use 2 coats of paint to get the true color. If you are doing a couple of tones, paint two poster boards and pin them up next to each other. Put them against the trim you have and leave them there for a few days. Live with it a see what you think. Keep in mind that the color may be slightly different if you are putting over the top of an existing color or how many coats you are using. Darker colors may need many coats of paint. I have found that many times, I need to put a primer on that will prevent the color of the current wall from bleeding through. This takes extra work, but really makes a big difference in the finished product.

Keep in mind what your end goal is. Do you want your oriental rug to be the focus of your room? If so, then your wall colors should accent the rug, not overwhelm it. The bolder your paint, the more it will attract your attention. You want to decide what the focus is and design around that focus. You may decide that the light furniture is best against an accent wall of a bolder color, while the other walls are kept in lighter hues within that color. Or the opposite, of dark furniture against a lighter tone on the wall with an accent wall directly across from the furniture to be a bolder color. Or maybe the bottom of the wall to be a bit darker of a hue, while the top section is a lighter hue, separated by a chair rail. This gives the room some dimension and separation. It is a great way to make a larger space seem more intimate.

Once you make your decision, buy the best quality paint that you can afford. This is a huge factor in being satisfied with the job, whether you are doing it yourself or hiring a professional painter. There really is a difference in the finished product with the quality of paint that you use. This is one job that you want to last for years.

Learn How to Clean Wood Furniture

Each kind of wooden furniture has special care needs. To know how to clean wood furniture you must know how the wood has been treated and what kind of wood the furniture is made of. Oiled, polished, and painted should all be cleaned differently. Different kinds of wood need different types of care. Learn about your furnishings in order to provide proper care.

Oiled wooden furniture has a warm gloss. In order to keep these looking their best clean with an appropriate furniture cream or apply furniture oil or linseed oil about every 6 months. Never wax this kind of furniture. Waxing can damage the wood and your furniture. If your furniture has water spots rub them away with dry baking soda and seal with oil. No other treatment should be needed. Polished wood is equally easy to care for.

Any furniture that is treated with chemicals other than paint is considered polished wood. To clean polished wood simply wipe with a furniture cream of your choice, wax, and shine with a chamois cloth. If treated wood appears to have water spots remove prior to applying wax by allowing oil to soak into the affected area for about an hour. While polished furniture is easy to care for painted woo furniture requires almost no care.

There is no need to wax painted wood. In actuality it is unnecessary to do anything except vacuum painted furnishings although you may want to gently wipe away fingerprints occasionally. Be very careful to use appropriate cleaners if you decide they are necessary, this rule applies to special types of wood commonly seen in furniture also.

Often woods such as bamboo or wicker are used in furniture. These types of wood require very little polishing or other care. Simply vacuum the wood to keep it clean. If the wood appears brittle spray with water and allow to air dry. The woo will absorb the water and unlike hard woods they will restore to natural shape rather than warping.

Because you know how to clean wood furniture you can be sure that your pieces are kept in top condition. This will save money, by preserving your current investments you need not purchase new furniture as often. Use these simple steps to ensure a long life and beautiful appearance for your wooden pieces. This will bring you peace of mind and will be more aesthetically pleasing.

Classical Finishes for Wood Furniture

Many new modern and synthetic products were introduced in the 20th and 21st century, leaving much of the traditional ways of finishing wood long forgotten. However, woodworking and finishing is an ancient craft and the oils, waxes, and resins historically used, still produce beautiful results that are hard to achieve from most any other process. Whether you are restoring an antique or building a new piece of furniture, consider using a traditional finish.

Following are finishing techniques dating from the mid-1600′s to the mid-1900′s.

OIL FINISHES

Linseed and tung oils are most commonly used, but other oils include walnut, soybean, sunflower, safflower, perilla, oiticica, and poppyseed. Linseed is pressed from the seed of the flax plant while tung oil is obtained from the nut of the tung tree. Oil finishes bring out natural characteristics of the wood and are relatively easy to apply. While it generally produces a satin sheen, applying many coats can produce a high gloss.

VARNISHES

When natural resins produced from plants, trees, and insects are added to the oil or to alcohol (spirits) a varnish is created. In most cases, spirit varnishes are more transparent and colorless, but an oil varnish is tougher and more water-resistant. Oil varnish is difficult and dangerous to make due to the hazards of heating a mixture of highly flammable materials, so consider ready-made traditional varnishes. Shellac is by far the best of the spirit varnishes and is much more flexible and durable.

FRENCH POLISH

Earlier recipes used other combinations and natural resins, but since the 1800′s, shellac, dissolved in alcohol, has been the main ingredient in a French polish. Applied with a pad, a good French-polish finish is very desirable and closely associated with fine furniture.

Shellac is made from the secretions of a lac bug and varies in color. Since it is solvent in alcohol, be careful of wine spills.

STAINS

Classic stains consist of dyes or pigments derived from plants, trees, and insects and are used to color the wood. Dye stains are transparent and soak deep into the wood, while pigment stains contain crushed minerals resembling very thin paint. Colors will fade with prolonged exposure to sunlight. However, the newer developments of synthetic aniline dyes are more lightfast and often cheaper.

Stains which chemically alter the color of the wood have also been used for centuries. These stains can be very beautiful and enhance the natural beauty of the wood, rather than obscure the grain patterns, but dangerous chemicals are used such as ammonia and tannic acid.

WAX FINISHES

Wax can be used alone as a finish or as a final protective coat. It is the most impervious to water compared to other natural products, but is relatively soft and damages easily. However, it is quickly repaired by adding another coat, protects against humidity, and produces a beautiful finish that is still preferred by many woodworkers.

Types of wax include beeswax, paraffin, carnauba wax, candelilla wax, lac wax, japan wax, and other waxes produced from trees, petroleum, minerals, and insects.

MILK PAINT

Paint has been found on early Egyptian furniture and used for centuries to protect, decorate, and to hide crude joinery. Milk paint is one type from ancient origin that is very durable and has a distinctive look not easily replicated. Colors will fade with exposure to sunlight and the natural pigments of the earth are more subdued than other types of synthetic paint.

The main ingredients in milk paint are milk, lime, and earth pigments. You can purchase milk paint in dry powdered form with authentic pigments and correct coarse texture.

While there are advantages and disadvantages to each type of finish, it is these characteristics together that help make an antique look and feel old. Before disregarding a finish based on what you might think is an undesirable effect, remember that the faded colors of a stain, the dirt embedded into wax, or the rougher texture of milk paint is was gives furniture the distinct feeling of character, age, and patina.