Aging and Antiquing Furniture Legs

Aging and antiquing furniture legs is an easy task if you want to fake age on a table or chairs. With some stain, paint and glaze you can fool most people into believing that your new furniture is an antique.

There are many ways to age and antique furniture. This tutorial will show you my favorite technique for table and chair legs.

If you’re just stumbling upon this post, I shared the tutorial for building a table last week. The table legs I used are the rope twist legs from Osborne Wood Products. I worked with Osborne Wood Products and custom designed the legs, so you won’t find them anywhere else. I do think they should have named them the “Brittany” legs or “Pretty Handy Legs.” LOL. I’m just excited that they provided me with a set for my table at no charge. 😉

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This tutorial works best with unfinished wood, but you can skip the staining step if you have pre-finished furniture.

Materials:

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• Furniture
• Minwax Early American Wood Stain
• White Chalky Paint (I used Farmhouse Paint)
• Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint (Linen)
• Modern Masters Tintable Glaze
• Modern Masters Van Dyke Brown
• Modern Masters Coffee Bean
• Rag
• Paintbrush
• Sander
• Sanding discs
• Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Wax

Instructions: 

Stain your furniture leg with the dark stain. Follow up with a second coat if you desire. Allow the stain to dry.

Paint the legs with white chalky paint. Add a second coat if you need more coverage.

Mix up the Miss Mustard Seed Milk Linen colored paint and brush on a layer of milk paint on top of the white paint. (For more variety, you could use a contrasting color instead of linen.)

Sand the table leg in random locations to expose the white paint and the stain in some spots. Try not to go through the stain to the bare wood.

Time to mix up the glaze. I experimented with several colors of the Modern Masters glazing cream colors and found that mixing VanDyke Brown and Coffee Bean gave me the ideal “dirt and age” color I was looking for. Pour a small amount of glazing cream into a container. Pour a drop of Van Dyke Brown and a drop of Coffee Bean into the glazing cream. Blend the three.

Dip the paint brush into the glaze and dab off most of the glaze on a rag. Paint it onto the legs in dry brush strokes.

Dab the glaze into the nooks and crannies on your furniture. Wipe off the excess.

Protect your furniture by applying Miss Mustard Seed’s furniture wax. Apply in a circular motion. Buff off excess.

The resulting table leg is aged, antiqued and looks beautiful as a farmhouse table.

You can also create a chippy look by skipping the chalky paint and painting Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint directly onto the furniture. After the paint dries, scrape a putty knife against the surface to chip off any loose paint.

For more details about achieving the chippy paint technique, you’ll find my aged chippy paint tutorial helpful.

What do you think? Do you love the aged farmhouse look? I’m so excited about this rustic dining table and chairs that I can’t wait to have friends over for dinner now!

Love the reclaimed wood table top? Here’s the behind the scenes story about how the wood table top was made.

Click Here to view more aging and antiquing tutorials

Disclosure: I worked with Osborne Wood Products and was provided four table legs for my project. I was also provided with glaze and glazing colors from Modern Masters. I was not paid to write this post. I was not told what to write. As always, I am very particular about the products and brands I share with you. If I don’t like a product, you won’t see it on the blog.