In this post: One way to give furniture a nice aged look is to give it an antique glaze finish. Glazing adds depth and dimension to the details of a piece.
How to antique glaze furniture is the complete step-by-step tutorial on how to transform a hum-drum piece into something beautiful!
There are a few ways to antique glaze furniture, but there is an easy way to do it using a ready-made faux glaze by companies like Modern Masters, Behr (not sure if they still make it though), and General Finishes.
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Tip: If you can’t find faux glaze, try our cheater glazing method found here.
Now I think the faux glaze was meant for all those crazy faux finishes that people used to put on their walls like marble and ragging, etc. But it works really well mixed with a little paint as a glaze for furniture.
DIY Furniture Glaze Recipe
You’ll need a small amount of latex paint to mix with the glaze. I dug out some leftover Behr accent wall paint called Stepping Stones – sort of a taupe-y sand color. Then I mixed 2 parts water, 1 part paint, and 5 parts glaze.
How to Antique Glaze Your Own Furniture
- Distress any areas you’d like with fine sandpaper. Wipe away the sawdust.
- Dip a clean brush (I used a Purdy) into the glaze mixture, wiping excess glaze off onto the sides of the container.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 a glaze.
- 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 our table as is with the glaze. It has aged just fine!
Here is the before and after:
What do you think? Are you up for antiquing something soon?
I’ve been looking around canada for a product to do this and have had absolutely no luck. Thanks to you, I’m gonna be able to glaze my whole kitchen cupboard. Thank you sooo much. If you’re interested in seeing pics before and after let me know. I have a full week to finish it.
I love your beautiful french (?) lettering on the wall behind your hutch. Do you talk about it somewhere on your website because I couldn’t find it anywhere. Just a hint of how you did it would be appreciated.
p.s. you have lots of beautiful projects – what a team!
Hi there! This stencil is Royal Design Studio’s Springtime in Paris stencil. We talk about it in this post: http://akadesign.ca/?p=5255. Thanks fir asking!
I just found your blog..and as a fellow Canadian, I had a terrible time trying to find a glaze like so many blogs talked about. Then I bought the Behr’s glaze..but didn’t know how to use it. Thanks for the tutorial…:)