Dining Set Makeover Take 2

The wonderful thing about having a hand-me-down free table and chairs is that if I get the urge to redo it, I don’t feel bad or fear I could mess it up! If you’ll remember, I redid my kitchen table and chairs about a year and half ago. This is how the table looked originally.

  And the chairs:The corner-cutting paint job:
I was excited about my Pottery Barn-inspired black look, but my style has evolved and it was badly in need of refinishing. I cut some corners back when I painted it the first time, so now, I was determined to do it right. (I didn’t sand at all!! Eeek!)

This is the progression of my table: (Wow! It’s a little scary looking back at these ancient pictures!) As you can see, I usually kept the table covered with a tablecloth or placemats because I didn’t like the look of it. After being stored for a season, it got water damage on one side, and then I felt it really needed to be covered.

This was our little apartment where we lived while we finished college:

And then our first rental house:

I had known for awhile that I wanted to redo it again, so I looked for inspiration everywhere.

At one of my favorite antique malls:

Pinterest:

When I saw the burlap and white chairs at the antique store, I knew instantly that was what I wanted to do. The black and lime green was just not cutting it anymore. The plastic that I had covered the seats with had long since torn off and the kid’s chairs in particular were showing worse for wear. Lesson learned: lime green isn’t a good color choice for dining chairs when you have little kids.

First, I removed the seats. Then I cut the burlap (7 yards from Hobby Lobby– an excessive amount! You would have plenty and then some with 5 yards for 5 chairs!) a couple inches larger than the seats. Using my staple gun, I pulled the burlap tight and stapled all the way around.

Then I spray painted the frames satin white. When they dried, I sprayed on a clear polyurethane to protect the finish. I LOVE how they turned out! (And so does my hubby!) 😉 Score!

Next I tackled the table. I really wanted to get it done before my good friend Kimmie came to visit us! The first step was to spray some paint stripper in sections on the top and edge of the table (Crown Tuff-Strip). Using a plastic scraper, the paint peeled right off in chunks. It worked great, as long as it didn’t dry on the tabletop. Be sure to have adequate ventilation, like in your garage with the door open.

After all the black paint was removed from the top and edge of the table, I gave it a light sanding. In some places, the edge of the table sanded down to bare wood that was lighter than the rest, so I went ahead and stained the edge with some Zar dark stain. (The best stain ever!) It blended the whole thing very well.I opted to just paint over the legs rather than hassle with stripping and sanding them down. I gave it a good coat of Kilz primer though just to be safe, then brought the table inside and painted the legs and skirt satin white.

I instantly loved the new look! I’m excited that the set has gone back to the heart of some of its original beauty, but still is updated and modernized.

So again, we went from this (and this):

To this: