How to Age Wood Tutorial
Janny is here to show us How To Age Wood with simple house hold products. Enjoy! -Linda
Hello everyone! I’m ecstatic that I get to be a guest today and mingle with fellow Craftaholics. Thanks Linda! My name is Janny and you can normally find me at Que Linda or at my new Etsy Shop. Today I’m going to show an amazing technique for giving wood a rustic, aged look. So here is how to age wood!
I recently made this sign out of wood from our 20+ year old gate. Something about the weathered wood gives the piece extra character. There’s one problem- our old gate only has so much to give.
I came across a tutorial for aged wood for home repair purposes at Xtreme Restoration. It works like a charm for crafty projects too. I recently used this technique on this sign.
(You can’t even tell the difference from 20+ year old wood!)
How to Weather Wood
Weathering wood is super easy to do and I’ll bet you have most of the supplies lying around the house already.
You’ll need:
Grade #0000 Steel Wool
Vinegar
Mason Jar
Oh yea- a couple of tea bags too!
Wood- (I bought a long wood plank for under $2 at the home improvement store- then I cut it into smaller pieces.)
1.) Tear off some steel wool and put it into a mason jar. Then pour the vinegar in to about 3/4 full or so and screw the top on. Exact measurements aren’t important. I’d say I used a very small handful of steel wool.
Then let it sit for at least 24 hours.
2.) The next day, brew tea in a separate jar and “paint” it onto the wood. I used 2 tea bags since I was aging several pieces of wood. (any brand of tea will work) It’s also okay if the tea becomes cold. Tea has tannic acid, which will react with the steel wool/vinegar mixture.
3.) After the tea has dried, paint the steel wool/ vinegar mixture onto the wood. You’ll see the color start to change immediately. I’d say that it takes about 30 minutes to completely change. The wood will smell like vinegar afterwards, but you can wash it off with water once it’s dry.
Below you can see the difference between the treated vs. untreated wood~
Different types of wood react differently to this treatment as well. The pine (top) turns a grayish-brown while the redwood (above) eventually turns black. You can see how it turned black on the top right (beside the pine). For some reason the picture above makes the pine look almost grayish blue.
This picture shows a truer color to how the pine looks after the treatment.
Pretty cool, huh?
Thanks for having me as a guest today, Linda!
XOXO~Janny
That’s a great technique! Super easy, but looks awesome! Thanks for showing us how to age wood, Janny! Don’t forget to follow Craftaholics Anonymous on Facebook for exclusive Crafting Q&A!
About Linda@CraftaholicsAnonymous
That´s AWESOME!!! I´ll try it in the next weeks.That´s really a cool idea!!!Lovely greats from germany… :-) yara
Another great project. Great information. Vinegar should be in all households. I buy only by gallon size. HAPPY EASTER
Wow that’s pretty cool! Thanks for sharing a tutorial! Definitely will give this a try the next time I want to age wood:D
Thanks again Linda for having me as a guest! It was so fun to share this technique with everyone!
I love this. Thank you, Janny, for sharing your tutorial with us. :) I already have a great idea of what project I want to use it on!
Very cute! I have been trying to find out how the letters are put on. What are you using for that here?
Hello, i saw on the net that you aged a wooden panel it is awsome , could you please let me know how you did the grey finish on the pine? What did you do for the panel you made? is it with tea or without the tea? will it react the same on ash wood?
Hi Linda!
The ‘Sometimes Dream’ sign– what wood was used in that treatment? Was that the pine but after an extended period post-treatment?
And with regards to the redwood, is the bottom right the untreated, followed by immediate look on bottom left, and some extended post-treatment time on the top right in that image?
thank you!
The vinegar smell is the only bad thing about using this method to age wood. I will try to rinse my projects with water to try to make it go away. Ironically, my biggest customer is a store that sells designer vinegars. Another method I used was to spray the wood (red cedar) with a lye based oven cleaner and it looked awesome.