Interior decorator René Meyeridricks from Bella Vita Interiors  gives advice on furniture revamping.

Hand-me-downs are inevitable. Whether you’re living by yourself or co-habiting, at some point you’ll be making use of something that isn’t necessarily your taste. For some reason, this phenomenon occurs all too often once you’re married. Suddenly, your grandmother’s ancient Singer sewing table finds its way into your otherwise chic living space and you don’t even know how to thread a needle.

Interesting, aesthetically pleasing spaces are made up of layers of textures, designs and styles, but the problem occurs when a piece does not complement the rest of your décor. As much as you want to please your mother-in-law by placing her ball and claw coffee table in a prime position in your living room, it looks out of place and dated compared to the chic contents of your home.

An easy, cost effective way to turn furniture from drab to fab, is paint techniquing. Paint techniquing includes everything from spray-painting to French washing and can update a piece of furniture within hours. Using the right primer, anything from melamine and plastic to solid wood can be paint-techniqued.

It’s advisable to leave genuine antiques (anything more than 100 years old) as they are, due to their value. Remember, antique reproductions are not antiques and are often made with cheaper selections of wood, so you can have a clear conscience when gilding your mom’s cabriole leg dresser. When in doubt, contact an antique dealer to verify the age and value of an item. Vintage pieces are anything older than 30 years, such as the extremely popular Amoeba tables of the 1940s and designer Mies van der Rohe‘s immortal Barcelona chairs of the 1930s.

Updating furniture takes a bit of creativity and imagination to see the potential in outdated pieces, but luckily, enthusiasm costs nothing. Enormous changes can be made by re-upholstering or designing slip covers for old sofas in a modern fabric. Depending on the choice of fabric and whether structural repairs need to be made, you can have a new sofa for less than you’d pay in a store, keeping in mind that the fabric used should be classified as a high rub count fabric. This means that it can take hours of TV watching and Sunday afternoon naps without wearing through.

When deciding to re-upholster or not, it’s important to take the quality of the furniture into account. As there is generally a strong, relative relationship between the price of an item and its quality, you can be guaranteed that an inexpensive armchair in 1975 will probably not stand the test of time in 2011. In this case, structural repairs will almost always have to be made, resulting in an expensive revamp of an essentially second hand item. Always consult a professional decorator or upholsterer to provide you with an accurate assessment and quotation – there is nothing worse than budgeting for something, only to discover that it’s going to cost more than you expected.

Updating old pieces is not only exciting, but very rewarding too. Many of us grow up with furniture that created joy and memories in our childhood homes. They say that home is where the heart is – revamping these pieces allows those memories to live on in a modern, updated way and essentially helps to turn a house into a home.

Image 1: White sideboard Design Sponge, Image Gallery 2: Ovel black oak chair Think Restore, Blue & White Table via Pinterest, yellow distressed dresser Poppy Seed Living, green sideboard via Pinterest, Image 3: restyled dresser from Knack, Image 4: renovated yellow duchess, ImageGallery 5: Cafe number chairs Think Restore, Whit cupboard via Pinterest, living room with restored furniture via Deco Love, Image Gallery 6:chalkboard bird stool, marble top coffee table, China black tea box all from Think Restore, 1940′s Occasional Chair from Not On The high Street.

Bella Vita Interiors offers free consultations and offers PrettyBlog readers 10% discount on all items and services supplied.