Home Interiors: Brown furniture returns to our living rooms
![Home Interiors: Brown furniture returns to our living rooms Home Interiors: Brown furniture returns to our living rooms](/cms_media/module_img/7658/3829129_4_articlesmall_iStock-1254421795.jpeg)
A pedestal desk that may well have started its life as a chiffonier sideboard. Repurposing takes some careful planning to ensure the dimensions will make sense. It’s not savage to take something modest apart and press those stunning timbers back to work. File picture
Decades of waxing will have lent this furniture a silken feel and a surfacing you can look into. It’s important to understand that when you buy something even 80 years old in wood, be it pine or laburnum, it could carry elements another 100-200 years older than the table, chair or pier mirror. Add to that a hearty lineage, swathed in human stories — well, who could resist this fascinating ballast?
![Before painting even a 1960s cabinet, ensure it’s not better left with its wood or veneer on show; Chalk paint and Chalk and Satin paint colours in Capability Green, Graphite, and Greek Blue, Anne Sloan. Before painting even a 1960s cabinet, ensure it’s not better left with its wood or veneer on show; Chalk paint and Chalk and Satin paint colours in Capability Green, Graphite, and Greek Blue, Anne Sloan.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7658/3829123_4_articleinline_5._VV._October_28_2C._Annie_Sloan_paint.jpg)
Sticking an ancient oak coffer at the end of a velvet bed-frame is not as weird as you may think. With a relatively up-to-date roomscape, the trick is to keep your choice to one or two pieces per room.
![Rody and Anne Keighery of RJ Keighery Auctioneers, Waterford, Antiques Ireland. Rody and Anne Keighery of RJ Keighery Auctioneers, Waterford, Antiques Ireland.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7658/3829126_4_articleinline_4._October_28_2C_VV._Anne_and_Rody_Keighery.jpg)