My wife is getting well into the French Country Chic look, so I want to do something with the slightly fake looking orangey Oak coloured fireplace surround that is in our new house. Any ideas how to distress it slightly and give it texture rather than the rather plasticy looking varnish it has now ??
Richard.
I am assuming that it is real oak and not some fake wood varnished to look like oak. If it is then forget it. It would be far better and a lot less time consuming to rip out what you have and get some real oak.
Assuming that it is varnish on real oak then strip it off down to the bear wood and initially sand it. You can then ding it a bit. Useful tools are a hammer and a piece of chain. You could also selectively scorch it with a hot piece of metal.
Then use either a boiled linseed oil and turpentine mix to provide a fairly flat oiled finish which you can then raise a bit using a little beeswax polish. No varnish.
.andy
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Bear Wood? Not heard of that before. I guess it would be a softwood though ;o)
Only playing. I have taken an angle grinder with abrasive disc to the old oak railway sleeper that I am going to use as a fireplace lintel and it has come up a treat. I needed to sand a bit smooth afterwards though to get rid of the scratch lines from the coarse paper.
Rob
B*gger. That'll teach me to do two things at once :-)
It isn't a creosote impregnated one is it? If so, you might not want it to be near the fire....
.andy
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An old bunch of keys at the end of a chain can be bashed into the wood repeatedly to give a really good "distressed" effect
Also planed or sanded oak tends to look very new so you may want to use a wax with a little stain in it.
If it is English oak and not the red/pink American oak it will age to a beautiful colour in a couple of years.
Nick
No it has not been soaked in anything and is a lovely piece of wood. Actually, I don't think it was a sleeper but the yard I bought it from said it was. It looks to come from a much longer piece and apparently it's from France.
Rob
On Tue, 02 Mar 2004 02:36:19 +0000, a particular chimpanzee named Andy Hall randomly hit the keyboard and produced:
What? Thinking and typing?
Yep. I'm knocking out War and Peace..
.andy
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