Primitive Country Furniture and Decor

Primitive country furniture brings a harmonious balance into your home with the rest of your decor. These hand-crafted, rustic, and pre-aged furnishings provide warm and welcome comfort to your family and your visitors. For decades the cabin decor, Adirondack, and mountain lodge styles have been known as the least imposing and most comfortable styles available to the country decorator. Primitive country furniture will blend nicely with other similar decorating styles such as the ones listed above and even Arts and Crafts, Mission Movement, French Country and Craftsman furniture. Now, through the incomparable woodworkers of the Amish communities, you too can recreate the surroundings of the great outdoors in your own country home. Your furniture will be understated with simple classic lines.

Cloth and paint colors are neutral or in early Americana colors. The primitive furniture and pillows will be cozy and overstuffed. In the old days, many primitive country furnishings were made from twigs, branches and other natural elements - so look for earthy colors and uneven tones. Primitive country furniture series has tables, chairs, desks, armoires, nightstands, dressers, benches, beds, and thick wood coffee tables. You'll find them painted, raw, aged, or in artisan hand crafted, old fashioned, traditional designs. The primary feature of this style country furniture is the use of materials from reused pieces, barns, and posts. Planks are old, or fashioned to appear vintage or antique. Some primitive furniture has been created and decorated with bark, branches and twigs. Each log and twig is especially chosen for their shape and texture - right down to the decorative trim. The chunky wood styles of primitive country furniture lend themselves easily to armoires, wardrobes and big tables. Big chests and trunks also double as an innovative coffee table or bench for the foot of the bed.

Decor

In the double drawer wardrobe you'll find much more than a closet. Plain oval dining tables with benches make excellent primitive country dining sets. The wooden wall cupboards, wardrobes, plate racks, and hutches give your dining room a comfortable, country style. Or, place a rectangular work table in your kitchen, and use antique kitchenware for your cooking and serving - this brings back memories of an old farm house, doesn't it? Use traditional lighting and chandeliers for a truer experience - with those roughly finished cupboards and racks nearby the kitchen experience will be rustic, homey, warm. There are many different ways obtain primitive country furniture, and they aren't all expensive! Buying used furniture and roughing it up to age it, or overstuffing and recovering larger pieces are two easy and inexpensive alternatives.

Primitive Country Furniture and Decor

This repurposing of existing furniture is also good for the environment. Just because your existing piece of furniture isn't working for you today, doesn't mean that it can't be changed to work for you in the future. For instance, a friend of mine was given an ugly outdated, veneer covered entertainment unit. It was large and just what she needed for her dining room to display her plate collection and cookbooks. We spent 1/2 a day sanding, painting and aging the piece and today everyone asks where they can get primitive country pieces just like hers! Country decor is possible with all the rooms of your house. You can decorate your home wholly or partially in the country style.

So take a look at your existing furniture with a creative eye and consider some of the ways below to changing it to suit your style: Paint, then sand and stain. You won't believe how different a piece of furniture can look once sanded, painted and stained. You can even change the style of the piece. A cheap wooden Ikea table turned into a beautifl primitive country coffee table (years after use) with a thick application of crackle paint and whitewash finish. Outdated dressers can also change. Change the hardware. A few vintage, restoration or antique handles, hinges or pulls can turn a piece of wood furniture into a rustic masterpiece. Similar to painting, staining and sanding, old glass balls or brass handles add primitive to any previously country furnishing. One of my favorites is to re-upholster or re-cover a sofa, chair, loveseat or footstool. Thick primitive fabric is now easier to come by than ever before (or just look for muslin) to update a piece of furniture.

If you don't think you have the skill to re-upholster a piece, shop around for some country slipcovers - instant change. Buy antique or vintage pieces. Besides being environmentally friendly, those deals fit right into primitive country decor. Rather than spending 00 and more on a new couch or dining set, why not shop around for something similar, but gently used? Primitive country furniture is available at affordable prices and will lend that welcome air to any room of your home. Country decor reduces the modern air to most homes and apartments - enhancing the peaceful and authentic nature of your home and your family members.

Primitive Country Furniture and Decor

Eric Klein has been working with many home owners throughout the years on obtaining the best furniture for the best price based on client taste and style. Today he shares his information and favorite websites with everyone for free online at http://www.primitivecountrydecor.com.

Decorative Painting - How to Stencil a Colorful Piece of Hand Painted Furniture

Stenciling is a decorative painting technique that is fun and quite easy to learn. As a designer and decorative painter of children's furniture, I have used various decorative painting techniques and stenciling is one of my favorites. I often combine stenciling with other techniques. It adds a great deal of versatility to the designs that you create. Even though stenciling is most often used on walls, for the purpose of this article, I am going to explain how I use stenciling when creating a unique and colorful piece of hand painted furniture.

The first step is to prepare the furniture through sanding and base coating the wood with a good primer. The example I'm going to use is the step stool I created for a small child which I call "Night Frog". I decided that this stool should be very colorful and suitable for a boy or girl. I sanded and primed the legs of the stool, but since I planned to stain the top of the stool black, I only sanded the top. Once this initial preparation was finished, I selected the colors for the stool, stained the top black and painted each leg a bright color-lime green, yellow, orange and fuchsia with black accents.

Decorative

The next step is to select the stencil that works with the colors you're using and adds the right amount of design or whimsy to your piece of furniture. Stencils come in multiple layers or sometimes in just one layer. If the stencil you're using is more than one layer, make sure you mark the surface of the wood with the registration marks you find in the corners of the stencil. Each layer has a matching mark and once the marks are lined up, you are assured that each stencil layer is placed correctly. In my example, I selected a red-eyed jungle frog sitting on a leaf. Then I added stars around the frog because the background was black-hence a night frog. But you're not ready to stencil the frog on the stool until you see what it will look like once you have all the colors together.

Decorative Painting - How to Stencil a Colorful Piece of Hand Painted Furniture

The last step of preparation is to paint a piece of cardboard or watercolor paper with the same color as your background. Once that dries, place the stencil on the prepared paper and tape it with painters tape so that it doesn't move. Don't forget to match up the registration marks if you're using a stencil with multiple layers. Select the colors for each part of the stencil and begin. Most instructions will tell you to use a stencil brush in the size that fits what you're doing but I prefer to use a sponge. I take a piece of sponge about 4"x 4" and pull the four corners together and secure with a large safety pin. The result is a rounded piece of sponge that fits nicely in your hand. This works well for large areas of color. For smaller areas I use small sponge daubers to apply small amounts of color or to add shading. Just like using a stencil brush, you want only a small amount of paint on the sponge. Once you have dipped your sponge into the paint, wipe it on the sides of the container and dab the sponge on a paper plate or paper towel a couple of times. You don't want the sponge wet. It will appear dry but still leave color wherever you dab it.

The next step is to apply the color with the sponge. This is a step that needs to be done a few times until you're comfortable with your technique. I can't tell you the right way to apply the paint-you'll find that out for yourself as you do it. That is the main reason you need to do this on a prepared board before starting on your furniture or on a wall. As you dab or pounce the sponge, you'll develop your own technique.

Once you've finished the stencil with the colors you've selected, you can see how all the colors go together and how they look on the background color. If you aren't satisfied with the results, you'll want to do it again with different colors. Once you are happy with the colors and satisfied with your technique, you're ready to stencil your own unique piece of decorative hand painted furniture.

Decorative Painting - How to Stencil a Colorful Piece of Hand Painted Furniture

As a small business owner and crafter, Marilyn Mocker is accomplished in the art of wood finishing and has developed a distinctive style in both staining and painting furniture. Marilyn specializes in hand painted furniture hand painted furniture for children and creates small colorful and often whimsical stools, table and chair sets and hand painted rocking chairs for children. The pieces she creates are shown and sold at craft shows in Pennsylvania and online at [http://www.anglerandsillysalmon.com/index.php?p=catalog&parent=6&pg=1]