The Ultimate Book of Doing Up Old Junk

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Summary: Wonderful technqiues to spruce up your trash & make it great
Review: If you have ever dreamed of tuning trash into treasure this book will show you just how to do it. A wide variety of creative effects will help you transform many useful and exciting pieces for your home.

Using old, cheap or run down furniture and decorative items as raw materials, the basics of repair and finish stripping are shown. Then the fun begins with refinishing techniques including painting, decoupage, stenciling, mosaic & gilding.

Many variations on the techniques are thoroughly described and illustrated. Over 50 step by step projects include a wide range of items and materials that will provide inspiration for whatever piece you are working on.

The book is fully illustrated with clear close up color photos. A series of templates for stenciling is a nice bonus. This book will be a valuable source of ideas for many years to come.

Rating:
Summary: Love It
Review: It's a down-to-earth book for those of us who want our homes to look personal and lived in.

Rating:
Summary: You will never want to throw anthing out again.
Review: What struck me most about this book is its down-to-earthness. Who of us doesn't have an old ugly wooden jewellery box lying around, ugly melamine cabinets or an old scratched up desk? As I flipped through the pages, I found inspiration in just about everything and found the projects to be something that I would actually do!

The first section of the book gives insight on how to source junk, how to decide whether or not a piece is salvageable and how to make simple repairs and prepare the surface for finishing. The 2nd section moves onto the various ways to tranform a piece through the use of moldings, mosaics, decoupage, decorative painting, faux finis, stencilling, stamping etc. The third section gives you ideas on sourcing inspiration but I found myself skipping this section altoghether as there are over 50 projects in the final section and I had no difficulty finding inspiration amongst them. The variety of projects is quite diverse, ranging from small projects like revamping your lamps, glassware, baskets, boxes etc to bigger projects like refinishing cabinets and furniture.

I am currently renovating my powder room from the inspiration I got from this book. My walls are painted with a gorgeous faux fini that was inspired from the kitchen table project and they are currently awaiting the 2nd step which is the stencilling. My ugly grey melamine cabinets are sporting a gorgeous wood frame and are waiting to be painted all white with an antiquing technique to be applied on the decorative molded frame. The ugly plastic handles have been thrown out (yes not everthing will you want to salvage), the remaining holes have been plugged and gorgeous pewter handles are wating to be installed. I have never done anything like this before and as I see the project unfold, I know that the end result will be beautiful and elegant. The book has been extremely instrumental in this project and will be for future projects I have in mind..so it goes without saying that his book is a keeper!