So today I decided to restore an old picture frame. I bought a cheap frame on Craigslist, it was already mounted but I didn’t like the picture it was with so I made it my project to restore the frame and put one of my fine art pieces inside it.
First, I removed the old hardware. The frame had the hardware nailed to the frame itself so I had to be careful not to chip in the actual frame itself. If this does happen to you, you can always glue the pieces of the frame back.
Below you can see the detail of the old frame. It is a gorgeous frame but you can see in the corner that it has a lot of dirt inside the creases where paint should be.
Another detail shot, can you see why I fell in love with this frame?
The next step after some cleaning is where paint comes in. I bought a small tin of gold metallic paint from Michaels. It is perfect for wood and it will brighten up the frame beautifully. I used about one half of this container for the entire frame and I painted with a small brush.
I did two coats of paint on the entire frame. The only thing I was careful of was to leave some of the black detail in between the gold. I didn’t want it all to be covered; my goal was for the detail to stand out.
Here is the finished refurbished frame.
You can see below how the detail came out. I am happy with the result, I must say.
It looks brand new and the detail is still visible. My last step was to put one of my fine art pieces inside the frame. I was very excited, I could not wait for the frame to dry to see it all finished.
