If you are getting tired of a certain piece of furniture, no need to worry. It is easy as pie to change it to a whole new look. If you move and the color of certain furniture no longer matches or goes well in a room, again, no worries. If you decide you want to go with a whole different style, no problem! This article will address not only how to refinish it, but how to give it a distressed style when you're done if you so desire. If distressed is not your particular taste, just don't distress it when you're done.
Here is how to change your old furniture to a whole new look. Grab the furniture you want to change, for example, a kitchen table (but it can be anything) and sand it down really well. You will want to be sure to have an electric sander to save you tons of time and elbow grease. Sand down the entire piece of furniture to get rid of any gloss finish that may be on there. The delicate features of the furniture will need to be hand done with either rough sandpaper or a rough sand block.
Random Sander
After you have sanded down the entire piece of furniture, you can either paint it or stain it. If the furniture is made of wood and you want the grains of the wood to show, stain it. Otherwise paint it. If you do end up staining it, just brush it on like you would with paint. After the paint or stain is dry and you are satisfied with how it looks (no more coats are needed), then you can distress it. Otherwise, put several coats of a heavy gloss finish over it and you are done!
To distress the piece of furniture, you can bang it with a rock with many jagged edges, or to ensure a more random look, you can tie the rock (or whatever hard object you choose) to a rope and swing it to hit your furniture. If you do not wish to do a bang up job on your furniture, you can simply skip that step and just take some rough sandpaper and sand off the stain (or paint) a little bit off the edges so that a small part of the original wood shows through to give it a somewhat worn look. Then when you are done with that, you can put on the several coats of heavy gloss to protect your furniture and your work.
Your furniture will not only have a different color, but can also have a whole different style and look to it as well. A good idea may be to start on something that may not mean as much to you as your favorite piece of furniture, that way if your practice run does not go according to plan, you have not ruined your furniture. You can practice on a big block of wood to visualize what it would look like when you are done, and then try to imagine that on your furniture. If you still like it, then you can work on the real deal.