How To Make Unfinished Wood Look Like Weathered Barnwood

How To Create The Look of Aged Barnwood

Aged barnwood is oh so pretty. I'm going to show you how to take unfinished wood and give it an aged barnwood finish in two easy steps! I also have a video of the barnwood process for you!

Aged Barnwood Flower Caddy

The area in Tennessee where we live is beautiful. There are a lot of farms around and I enjoy going on long Sunday drives just to look at the barns…yes, that’s what I said. I love old barns. There are a lot of tobacco barns in the area and the wood is all aged and weathered…and perfect. I created the look of authentic rustic barnwood on my new wood caddy.

FolkArt Painted Finishes Barnwood Tint & Wax

The process to turn the unfinished wood into rustic weathered barnwood was simple and the results were amazing.To create authentic looking barnwood I used FolkArt Painted Finishes Barnwood Tint and Barnwood Wax. The tint and wax allows the true characteristics of the unfinished wood to show through.

I started with this unfinished wood caddy/tote. Buy the caddy here....Unfinished Wood Tote (affiliate link)

Make Unfinished Wood Look Like Weathered Barnwood

The wood caddy really looks like it’s made from rustic weathered barnwood. You can see the weathered fence panel in the background and how similar the wood caddy is to the wood of the fence.

The first step in the process is applying the Barnwood Tint. The FolkArt Shortie Brush with it’s stiff bristles is perfect for applying the tint smoothly and evenly.

This is how the wood looked after applying the Barnwood Tint. The tint takes about four hours to dry.

The next step is applying the Barnwood Wax. I used a soft lint free rag and poured a small amount of wax onto the rag. I rubbed the wax on going with the grain of the wood.

Immediately after applying the wax I took a hard plastic card (credit card or something similar) and using firm pressure scraped it across the caddy going with the grain of the wood. This removes the top layer of wax leaving a small amount of wax that resembles actual Barnwood Tint. A scrap piece of wood also works great for this step.

Rustic Barnwood Finish

There are many uses for the multi purpose caddy. For the time being I decided it was the perfect container for my pretty impatiens. Who knows what I will use it for this Fall.

Watch the video of me using the barnwood finish technique on a wood caddy....

Barnwood Finish Tutorial

FolkArt Painted Finishes includes Barnwood, Concrete, Moss, and Rust. The Plaid Creators used all of the painted finishes products on our birdhouses we painted at Plaid Headquarters.

Aged Barnwood Finish

I think the JTS and I are going to be building a few small tables and I can’t wait to use the Barnwood Tint and Barnwood Wax again. I already ordered more tint and wax so I would have it on hand!

Supplies for this project:
FolkArt Barnwood Tint (no longer available)
FolkArt Barnwood Wax

As always, thanks for being here and have a great day, Kathy

Disclosure: I partnered with Plaid Crafts on this post. All words, ideas and photographs are 100% my own.