New Life for Country Cute Table and Chairs

My parents have had this dining set since the early 80's! For those too young to recall, that was before iPods, DVD's, and uhm, yeh, you could buy a bag of chips for 50 cents! ha ha I grew up at this table. It's in tons of photos from my childhood, each nick and scratch has a story.

It's still very sturdy, and my mom still loves the style of it. But she's so over the finish!

Now that the main floor laminate is in, we decided to breath new life into this set. Dad gave me carte blanche so I decided to have a little fun with it. Mom is a big fan of these spaces from Sarah Richardson so I figured I'd stick with the same colours and embrace the country charm of the set.

I did the table first. It's not rocket science: clean, strip and then sand, sand, sand....and sand some more! I primed and gave a coat of fresh paint on the legs and apron with Krylon Satin White. I stained the top with Minwax Red Chestnut, topped with three coats of Varethane to protect it.

The table is my favourite part of this project. It just turned out so darn cute, I wanted an excuse to keep it for myself!

 

Now for the chairs...oh the chairs. Many a curse word left my lips while working on them. I sanded them down (man those spindles are a pain in the butt, thank goodness for my Dremel!), and cleaned them with TSP (make sure you wear rubber gloves with this product). I primed and then sprayed these with Rustoleum Aqua.

Here's where things went downhill in a hurry. Thankfully, I only tried this method one one chair, so fixing it didn't take as long as it could have if I had gone gung ho on all four. I scuffed the chair up with 100 grit sandpaper and then rubbed a light coat of stain over the entire chair. Epic. Fail. Monstrously epic! Back to the drawing board.

Once I had all four chairs painted (again) I mixed up a light grey glaze to make the colour a little less....bright. I did four parts glaze to one part grey paint. I used a rag to wipe it all over the chairs and left just enough behind to have them look a bit aged. A coat of Varethane to protect them and they are done...finally.

Here's the finished set. They were both really surprised to see it, and mom just loved it!

I am now hunting for rug for this area...wish me luck!

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