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Soviet-era furniture – walls, cabinets, chests of drawers – does not differ in beauty, but is reliable and strong. Well, it’s just that the hand does not rise to take it to the landfill. And rightly so. It is very easy to update it, giving it a completely new sound and a modern look. Alteration of cabinet-type furniture may not be very difficult: there are materials that allow you to significantly change the appearance with little effort. The easiest way is to change the color and accessories. With fittings, everything is clear – choose what is more suitable for the style, and the color changes in two ways – paint and glue the film (or wallpaper).
Alteration of the old wall: changing the design
Pasting old furniture with self-adhesive film is the easiest way to change the decor. The film is today both monophonic and color, different colors, textures and shades. It does not make sense to glue a film with a wood pattern: otherwise it is in trend today. But plain or with a pattern – this is what can turn an old wall into new furniture. The actions are simple, but the work requires accuracy. But the result is excellent. See two photos. On the first one there is an old Soviet wall made of chipboard before the renovation, on the second one – after.
Now about how it was updated. A compacted self-adhesive furniture film was used, cream color, matte surface. The open part of the old wall was closed with glass doors, a translucent matte film was taken for the glass. Edging – furniture layout (also self-adhesive) color chrome. The order of work is as follows:
- Everything that can be removed, removed, disassembled. Remove old hardware.
- Surfaces must be clean and free of grease. This is easier to achieve with a soft cloth dipped in dish detergent. Then everything is washed off with warm water with a little vinegar. Wipe clean with a dry cloth.
- Cut out the details. It is better to cut the film 8-10 mm more. The rest is then cut off with a paper cutter.
- Spray the part to be glued with water from a spray bottle. On a wet surface, the film can be moved if something goes wrong. You can even peel it off without damaging it.
- After removing the protective layer from the film, carefully lay it out. Having aligned, begin to smooth with a soft cloth from the middle to the edges. Try not to have bubbles. To do this, you need to move gradually, without jumping from place to place.
- If there is still a bubble, it can be pierced with a thin needle approximately in the middle. Then expel air from the edges of the bubble to the hole and wipe the puncture site.
- After gluing the film, we take a clean thin cotton fabric, spread it on top and iron it with a warm iron (medium heat).
- We glue the trim, install new handles.
Such a sequence of work with every detail. With glass, everything is the same, only you need to glue it on the inner surface. After assembly, you have an updated wall. This technique can be used for any items: chest of drawers, bedside tables, wardrobe, kitchen set, etc.
For example, after a successful experiment with the wall, they redid the old cabinet in the same way and added it to the right. Now the whole wall is occupied. In the same way, you can update the kitchen set: stick a self-adhesive film and replace the handles.
There is a second way. It is a modification of the proposed method, but simpler and less laborious. Only the doors are pasted over and not with a film, but with non-woven wallpaper. Wallpaper is glued to PVA glue. To prevent the edges from bulging, the parts are cut 5 mm less on all sides. It turns out a kind of edging. Everything looks good (example in the photo below).
What is good about this method: it is easy to change the decor. Tired of the old appearance, cut off the wallpaper, pasted new ones. Despite the fact that the method seems frivolous, the appearance persists for several years. Its author even tried it on a kitchen set. Only the wallpaper on top is covered twice with PVA glue. In this case, the lockers can be washed. It is important to apply a layer of varnish evenly, without sagging, there are no other difficulties.
Sometimes the wallpaper is varnished. But before you do it, try it on an unnecessary piece: see how they react to it.
When choosing a varnish, you need to remember that acrylic and cellulose varnishes remain transparent after drying, polyurethane turns yellow after a while. Also, polyurethane is almost not softened by solvents: it can only be removed mechanically (from wood it is cleaned with sandpaper).
You may be interested in reading how to make a bar counter in the kitchen yourself (several options)
Dresser update
The old chest of drawers stood for who knows how many years in the attic, but it is very strong and reliable, not a single gram of cracked, only the polishing cracked. In terms of strength, it far exceeds modern products. This is the feature that is inherent in the old, still Soviet times, furniture. It is not very detailed (to put it mildly), but after standing for several decades in poor conditions, it remains strong. The makeover of the chest of drawers is more complicated: two techniques were used: painting, and then decorating with polyurethane moldings and wallpaper.
Step 1. We remove the accessories, remove the old coating. In some places the polishing was scraped off, in some places it was polished with sandpaper. Chips were covered with putty on wood, waited until it dries. At the final stage, everything was cleaned with a sandpaper with a fine grain. At the same time, the chest of drawers became the same as in the photo below.
Step 2. Installation of polyurethane moldings. When choosing moldings, make sure that they are not voluminous: too thick on a small chest of drawers will look very rough. They should be no wider than 5 cm and as narrow as possible when viewed from a profile.
Purchased polyurethane moldings are neatly cut, the corners are sawn down at 45 °. (How to file the corners of moldings correctly, read here). The pattern match must be perfect. We glue them on PVA. For reliability, you can additionally fix it on self-tapping screws with wide caps. A small recess is made under them, after the screw is screwed in, the hole is covered with putty. Try to ensure that the putty immediately lays down perfectly (you can touch it up with a wet finger), since it is problematic to clean off the dried one.
Step 3. Everything is treated with a primer. You can use PVA glue diluted with water in a ratio of 1: 2. After the primer dries, paint (two layers). For this case, water-based acrylic paint was chosen. The color is coffee with milk, although it looks very different in the photo. Color rendering is inaccurate.
Step 4. For decoration, wallpaper was chosen, in which the coating is made using the silk-screen printing technique. Pieces are cut according to the size of the inside of the frames from the moldings, glued to the PVA. After the glue dries, the entire chest of drawers is coated twice with a water-based varnish.
Step 5. And the last to install new legs (furniture wheels) and handles.
As you can see, there are no difficult jobs. Everything is really elementary. But all processes require accuracy – the appearance depends on it. In the same way, you can update the old wardrobe. Get a set for the room. Stylish and original.
When updating furniture, the worst thing is if the surface is varnished. The polish takes a long time to peel off. If the surface is smooth and polishing is not damaged, you can apply a primer for difficult surfaces on it, and paint after drying. This greatly speeds up the process of painting lacquered furniture.
If you have kids and a cottage or yard, you might be interested in reading how to make a playground with lots of photos. And you can read about making a sandbox here.
How to update an old nightstand
In the photo gallery below you can see the restoration process of an old polished nightstand. First, the old polishing was removed from it, puttied, sanded, and after processing it was painted twice with acrylic paint. Then paper with an interesting pattern was glued to the doors (it was a gift paper bag). After drying, everything together was covered with two layers of semi-gloss acrylic varnish.
The sequence of work is simple if you know how to do it. All processes will repeat the sequence of actions that you saw in the example of updating the chest of drawers. The result is also impressive.
Read more about how to restore furniture (how to remove varnish from the surface) read here.
Remaking furniture with your own hands is a painstaking task, but the result is worth it. Below is a photo of a bedside table restored using a simple technique: it is pasted over with embossed wallpaper, and varnish is applied twice on top.
How to make a tabletop fountain can be found here.
Table makeover
Using the same technology, a banal coffee table can be turned into a modern piece of furniture. In this case, it was pasted over with wrapping paper. It is dense, sticks well and does not sag when applying varnish.
Before starting work on decorating the tabletop, the legs of the old table and the edges of the tabletop were painted in a light color: this way it suits the new design style more. Then began the process of its transformation.
When pasting, the panel is cut out much larger than the dimensions of the tabletop. So it is necessary. Paper is glued on PVA, rolled with a roller so that there are no lumps and swellings. The surface must be absolutely smooth.
After pasting, take sandpaper with fine grain (it is more convenient to work if it is attached to a bar). Passing it along the edge, they bend and at the same time separate the excess paper.
Even cutting on a guillotine you will not get a fairly even edge. And with this method, it turns out to be designed professionally. Do-it-yourself and does not smell.
After the glue has dried, the surface is covered twice with a thin layer of varnish. It should be applied with a soft brush in a small amount. Layers are applied in different directions: first along the long side, then across.
What are the shelves and drawings for self-production can be found in this article.
Alteration of furniture: photo ideas
Remaking furniture with your own hands is a creative business. Even from a boring shelf you can make a great thing. And it is not necessary to repeat exactly what you see. Many useful ideas come during the execution of a “project”. The only pity is that some of the plans are not as attractive as it seemed. Try, experiment. Fortunately, modern technology allows you to do this at minimal cost.