Antiquing and Distressing Wood

After a quick read through several DYI websites on this topic I decided to find a human being to talk to. I went to Sacks in Dover NJ. They were extremely helpful and made sense of the whole matter. I did not want to paint then stress the wood like most antiquing is done. I dislike painted wood and would prefer to stain it. I was instructed on several ways to distress the wood must of which included physical damage. They were very nice at the store and let me experiment with multiple stains on their demonstration table.

Here is an example of stressing the aspen faux drawers. First the drawers were scratched with a can opener and then holes were punctured with a screw driver. The bottom is MinWax Jacobean stain; the top is espresso. The espresso did not take well on the Aspen.



Here I am stressing oak plywood. To the left is a dry brushing a gel espresso stain. The middle piece is the Jacobean with the gel espresso brush on and then rubbed in. The right most piece is a gel dark mahogany with gel espresso dry brushed on. The gel stain has a more intense hue but did not have the effect I wanted. I opted to use a liquid base of Jacobean and the dry brush gel of espresso.


Below are some more experiments. Mostly are very similar to those mentioned above.