Kitchen Buffet

Pre­vi­ous­ly, a buf­fet could be found in almost every home: it could be locat­ed both in the kitchen and in the din­ing area. The side­board for the kitchen is used not only as a place to store house­hold uten­sils, but also as an inte­ri­or ele­ment that cre­ates an atmos­phere of com­fort and har­mo­ny. The use of eco­log­i­cal mate­ri­als and large capac­i­ty are the main advan­tages that jus­ti­fy buy­ing or mak­ing an antique side­board. How­ev­er, this piece of fur­ni­ture is now rarely prac­ticed, giv­en its high cost.

What is a buffet

Cre­at­ing a com­fort­able atmos­phere, the buf­fet in the inte­ri­or can be pre­sent­ed in var­i­ous ver­sions. Most often, a clas­sic side­board is a wardrobe divid­ed into two parts. At the top is a cab­i­net with glass doors. They can be of two types:

• ful­ly trans­par­ent doors through which you can see the con­tents;
• a small trans­par­ent win­dow through which only part of the kitchen uten­sils can be seen.

The low­er part is rep­re­sent­ed by a cab­i­net with closed doors, often on the shelves of which dish­es and oth­er items are often placed. Shelves are made quite roomy, allow­ing you to hide large-sized kitchen uten­sils (pots, pans, house­hold appli­ances).

Between the upper and low­er parts of the fur­ni­ture there is an open table­top, where the house­wives put a bread box, vas­es, fig­urines.

In addi­tion to the clas­sic ver­sion, buf­fets are often closed or open. In the first ver­sion, the low­er and upper shelves will be closed, and in the sec­ond — open.

The side­board for the kitchen can be made in an old antique look, in a coun­try style that does not involve pre­ten­tious fin­ish­es, or Provence, made in white with many open shelves.

How to restore an old buffet

If you inher­it­ed antique fur­ni­ture, then do not rush to get rid of it. With the help of imag­i­na­tion, it will be pos­si­ble to bring the clos­et into the prop­er form and get a func­tion­al piece of fur­ni­ture. Know­ing how to update an old side­board, even an inex­pe­ri­enced begin­ner can cope with the restora­tion, although this will take a lot of time. Hav­ing restored fur­ni­ture with min­i­mal mate­r­i­al costs, you can get a design­er ver­sion that will last more than one year. And the use of dif­fer­ent meth­ods of restora­tion allows you to get a lot of options for the buf­fet.

Materials and tools for work

Restor­ing old fur­ni­ture with your own hands is a sim­ple, but trou­ble­some busi­ness. You will be able to accu­rate­ly deter­mine the nec­es­sary inven­to­ry only when you decide from what and what you will remake your fur­ni­ture. You can stick to the gen­er­al list of mate­ri­als and inven­to­ry, with­out tak­ing into account the dec­o­ra­tion process. To remake an old side­board with your own hands, you will need the fol­low­ing set of tools:

1. Sand­pa­per, nec­es­sary for grind­ing the sur­face.
2. A met­al spat­u­la and sol­vent will be need­ed if traces of old var­nish remain on the fur­ni­ture.
3. Ham­mer, pli­ers, screw­drivers are nec­es­sary for the assem­bly and dis­as­sem­bly of fur­ni­ture.
4. Pens. Antique wood­en side­boards should have the appro­pri­ate fit­tings to cre­ate a uni­fied look.
5. Put­ty or wax is use­ful to elim­i­nate cracks and oth­er irreg­u­lar­i­ties.
6. Primer.
7. Brush­es of var­i­ous sizes.
8. Oil and acrylic paints, stain.
9. Wood glue, mask­ing tape.
10. Ruler and tape mea­sure.

Complete restoration

If you still decide to repair the buf­fet with your own hands, you should be patient and time. Hav­ing decid­ed what you want to get from the restora­tion, you can get down to busi­ness. Com­plete restora­tion of fur­ni­ture at home is car­ried out in sev­er­al stages:

• Analy­sis of all sep­a­rat­ing ele­ments of the cup­board (han­dles, shelves, mir­rors).
• Remov­ing the old coat­ing is the most trou­ble­some stage. It is best to do this out­side or on spread paper so that pieces of paint and dust do not dam­age the floor. The use of spe­cial solu­tions allows you to achieve clean­ing results in a short time (about 20 min­utes).
• Clean­ing of dust: it is nec­es­sary to wash the fur­ni­ture both inside and out.
• Put­ty and sand­ing.
• Prim­ing and paint­ing.
• Appli­ca­tion of dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments.
• After the paint is com­plete­ly dry, apply var­nish (dou­ble coat).
• Buf­fet col­lec­tion.

Partial restoration

Restora­tion of antique fur­ni­ture can be car­ried out par­tial­ly. At the same time, the recon­struc­tion con­cerns only the lac­quer coat­ing, which is dam­aged in some places.

The algo­rithm con­sists of the fol­low­ing steps:

1. With the help of gaso­line, remove the remain­ing fat from the sur­face.
2. With an iron wash­cloth, remove the lay­er of var­nish from the dried area.
3. After remov­ing the remain­ing dust from the var­nish with a dry cloth, apply a fresh coat of var­nish. Please note that the var­nish should be select­ed the same as was used pre­vi­ous­ly.

Exterior finish

To update the exte­ri­or of the side­board with your own hands, sev­er­al meth­ods are used: decoupage, dec­o­ra­tion, repaint­ing and arti­fi­cial aging. The design of the buf­fet depends entire­ly on the pref­er­ences of the own­er.

repainting

Paint­ing an old side­board in col­ors that were fash­ion­able 60 years ago will not only refresh the look of the fur­ni­ture, but also give it orig­i­nal­i­ty. Blue, gold and white col­ors were espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar then. To repaint fur­ni­ture, you must adhere to the fol­low­ing algo­rithm of actions:

• Remove old paint and var­nish, sand the sur­face.
• Install suit­able fur­ni­ture fit­tings.
• Paint the side­board.
• Coat with var­nish (after the paint has dried).

Decoupage

To per­form decoupage, you will need nap­kins with the select­ed pat­tern, glue, acrylic paint and var­nish. After clean­ing and paint­ing the sur­face, it is nec­es­sary to pre­pare a draw­ing. To do this, an addi­tion­al lay­er of paper is removed from the nap­kins and an orna­ment is cut out. Glue is applied to the sur­face where the pat­tern will be, and the pat­tern itself is applied. The edges of the pat­tern are re-coat­ed with a thin lay­er of glue, which, after com­plete dry­ing, are var­nished.

decoration

With the help of spe­cial sten­cils, you can dec­o­rate an old side­board. At the same time, you can buy sam­ples in the store or inde­pen­dent­ly choose the pat­tern you like on the Inter­net. The dec­o­ra­tion tech­nique is quite sim­ple: after attach­ing the orna­ment to the sur­face, you need to care­ful­ly cov­er it with paint.

Aging

There are sev­er­al ways to age fur­ni­ture:

1. With the help of craque­lure var­nish. This method allows you to get antique fur­ni­ture in a short peri­od of time. Hav­ing pre­pared the side­board for paint­ing (you must first remove the old paint), craque­lure var­nish is applied to the sur­face. After it dries, var­nish the sur­face. This cre­ates the effect of an old cracked can­vas.
2. Mechan­i­cal “aging”:
   • after clean­ing from var­nish and paint, water stain is applied as a base;
   • the most con­spic­u­ous places are clar­i­fied with a moist­ened sponge;
   • pol­ished places that should be dark­er;
   • a stain is applied with a dif­fer­ent base;
   • using a brush, a shel­lac primer is applied to all places;
   • restora­tion wax is rubbed with a met­al brush.

How to make a buffet with your own hands

You can make a buf­fet with your own hands. The method of man­u­fac­tur­ing this piece of fur­ni­ture is as fol­lows:

1. Project devel­op­ment. Cre­at­ing a draw­ing and defin­ing all the ele­ments is an impor­tant point in the man­u­fac­ture of a side­board. Impor­tant ele­ments are: body, shelves, draw­ers, doors, fix­tures and han­dles.
2. Parts man­u­fac­tur­ing. If you have the skills, you can make the parts your­self, and in their absence, you can order in the work­shop.
3. Assem­bly of fin­ished parts. To do this, you will need a screw­driv­er or drill and fas­ten­ers. In this case, it is nec­es­sary to adhere to the fol­low­ing sequence of actions:
   • cre­at­ing a frame­work;
   • attach­ing backs to the frame;
   • hang­ing the upper part and installing sup­ports;
   • fix­ing shelves and installing doors.
4. Fin­ish­ing.

Style selection

When mak­ing a buf­fet, you need to decide on its style. Clas­sic cab­i­nets are tra­di­tion­al side­board options that only an expe­ri­enced car­pen­ter can com­plete, and besides, the price of such fur­ni­ture will be too high. A buf­fet in Provence or coun­try style is most often found in liv­ing rooms and kitchens, because it is much eas­i­er to make it (cheap­er mate­ri­als are used in the man­u­fac­ture).

A side­board for dish­es, first of all, should be prac­ti­cal and have open and closed shelves, as well as draw­ers.

In hous­es with a small kitchen, house­wives man­age to acquire this piece of fur­ni­ture. In order to save space, side­boards are made specif­i­cal­ly for the size of the kitchen or din­ing room (nar­row­er, low­er and less deep).

What to make — the choice of materials

The most expen­sive and durable option is a side­board made of wood. Hav­ing an aris­to­crat­ic appear­ance, the semi-antique side­board is made from noble types of wood. Dec­o­rate such fur­ni­ture with engrav­ing or carv­ing on the plinth, facade or cor­nices. Fur­ni­ture is made not only from wood, but also from plas­tic, acrylic and glass.

A less expen­sive option is fur­ni­ture made of chip­board and MDF. The pro­cess­ing of these mate­ri­als using dif­fer­ent meth­ods allows you to imi­tate the effect of antiq­ui­ty.