Bare Wood Furniture - The Importance Of Planning: A Few Recommendations To Decide The Greatest For Your Furniture

So you have taken the plunge and purchased a piece of bare wood furniture. Congrats! It is an excellent value for the money, and with appropriate care, can last for many years.

Hopefully, before you made the investment, you already had a clear idea what you wanted to do with the piece, but if not, then before you grab the first tool and begin to work, it's time to plan! A little investment in time now will save you a great number of hassles down the road.

Where bare wood furniture is concerned, you essentially have three alternatives for finishing the piece, and they are:

Leave the wood "naked"

Paint it

Stain it

All of these alternatives demands a bit of work on your part to protect your investment and maximize the beauty and performance of the piece.

The easiest thing you can do is just "finish" your new piece of bare wood furniture is to leave it in its normal state. If you choose this option, you'll probably want to protect the wood by coating it in some kind of wood protecting oil (linseed oil is commonly used on a wide variety of bare wood), but there're other products available also. Always, always, always try out first by applying a small amount of the oil you chose to an unseen corner of the wood to make sure that it won't cause any discoloration or any other reaction in the wood. Once assured of this, you can safely apply your chosen protective oil to the whole piece.

If you decide to paint your bare wood furniture, you've quite many to think about, other than color selection. Kind of paint, for instance. If a piece is to be positioned in a bathroom, you will possibly want to gravitate toward a glossy paint, as these stand up well to the high moist environment. For high traffic/heavily used pieces, semi-gloss paints offer a good balance of good looks and durability, and if the piece is planned for a lower traffic/lower intensity environment, then flat or satin finishes will help you well.

Now's also the time to consider whether or not you'll have any type of border or scrollwork on your bare wood furniture. If you're not specifically artistically inclined, there are a variety of beautiful stencils you can use, readily available at home stores (Lowe's, Home Depot), arts and craft shops (Michael's), and generally at chain retail outlets (Wal-Mart, Target), so you've got several options. Certainly, if you're artistically inclined or know someone who is, a hand painted border is a good strategy to really personalize the piece!

Finally, you might decide to stain your new piece of furniture. This is my personal favorite method of finishing pieces, although it takes the longest, and if this is the direction you wish to go, again, you have got numerous decisions to make, beginning with the type of stain you'll use. Stains come in oil-based, water-based, or gel, and while my own preference runs to oil based, you will want to experiment to find out which works best for you. Certainly, you do not want to experiment directly on your new piece of furniture, so I recommend purchasing an unfinished wood shelf of the same type of wood from your local home shop and experiment on that. Once you make a firm selection, you can proceed with confidence and begin working on your bare wood furniture direct.

Make a plan, have fun, and enjoy your new piece of bare wood furniture, regardless of how you choose to finish it!