The summer before last, yes it actually was that long ago, I found an old dining room table with four chairs. They were asking $25 for the set, which I would have gladly paid except for the fact that I am a complete cheapskate. I offered them $15 for it and they agreed. In absolute euphoria, I called hubby to bring the truck for an emergency pick up. Since I was on my way to work, I gave hubby the directions, informed the yard sale attendants, and went on my way. My day was bright and all was well with the world... until I got home...
The short drive home from work seemed to take forever. I was dying to examine my newest purchase. I also wanted to call my friends and family to brag about the awesome dining set I got for a steal. Hey, I am only human. Everyone loves to claim their right to brag at some point. As I am stroking and rubbing my newest project, my darling hubby walks in looking supremely smug. It was obvious he was gloating. It seems when he arrived to pick up my table and chairs, the person I talked to had stepped away for a moment. My hubby talk to another person who was unaware of the previous agreement to sell the set for $15. They sold it to him for $10. Hence the reason for his disgustingly happy attitude. Now, most wives would be happy, and even proud. Not me. It irked me to no end that he got a better price for it than me. There went all my bragging rights. I am glad that we got it for such a great price, I am just irritated that I wasn't the one to make the awesome deal.
Now that I have that part of the story out of the way, let's refinish this puppy!!! Unfortunately, I do not have 'before' pictures of the table, but here is one of the chairs. As you can see it is painted brown and has and ugly green vinyl covered seat cushion. Loving the shabby chic look, I decided to try my hand at refinishing it to look attractively old. (Is that an actual description??) Here's what the chair looked like before I executed my own particular brand of magic on it. okay, maybe not magic, bit I am quite pleased with the results.
The first thing was to remove the chair cushion, which I did by removing the four straight slot screws from the underside. There was a lot of dirt and crud where the seat had been, so I took a good stiff brush and cleaned the area real good. I then painted the chair with several coats of flat white paint. I used leftover flat ceiling paint and an old low quality paint brush. I didn't thin the paint and the old paint brush left super high brush strokes which remained after the paint had dried. The chair had to be thoroughly and completely covered with the paint because at some point in the restoration, I would be sanding it and I didn't want to sand through the white paint. I made sure to paint in the same direction with each coat of paint so that the brush strokes were the same every time. After I had the chair painted with as many layers as I thought I would need, I decided to put a wood stain on it. I know this sound weird, but my philosophy was this: If it is ugly I can re-do it. I mean, it was only $10, right??So as I said, I decided to stain the painted chair. I used Minwax brand stain in English Chestnut. I stained the chair in the same direction I painted it. To my utter amazement, the stain pooled into the grooves of the brush strokes and actually looked like wood grain. I stained heavier with some strokes and lighter with others until I had what looked like and stained bare wood chair. In case it escaped the readers notice, I believe I mentioned that I like the shabby chic look. Unfortunately for me, brand new beautiful stained wood chair is NOT shabby chic. I was a bit put out with the results. It looked like brand new stained oak. UGH!! I did what any self respecting junk lover would do. I brought out my secret weapon. SANDPAPER! Yeah, baby! Let's see, whatchu got now!!!
I sanded the entire chair until there was a pretty good bit of white showing through. Then I sanded more heavily in the areas that would receive more use and be more worn under normal circumstances. Ex. corners, edges, middle of the back...After I got the look I wanted, I wiped off the dust from sanding and put a coat of Minwax Polycrylic for a nice shiny finish. I put about three good coats. Here is the finished product. As you may have noticed, I have recovered the seat. I am in the process of making a tutorial on refinishing the seats. I hope to have it done within the next coupla days.
I don't have before pictures of my table, but it turned out wonderful, too. I am so pleased with the results.
No comments:
Post a Comment