Table Re-do

I did one of me first big make-overs for furniture and I am so excited!  I love how it turned out.  I have had the same kitchen table and chairs for 20 years.  I didn't pick them out, they were a surprise gift.  At the time of the gift we didn't really have a theme for our house other than "early whatever anyone is getting rid of", so it didn't really matter about the color.  We re-did the kitchen in the mid 90's and though the color scheme was entirely different we didn't do anything about the table and chairs.  Around here things usually stay until they are broken beyond repair...
Then I saw the post from "Grammee Linda" at her Behind My Red Door blog.  She had some beautiful pictures of her dining room chairs that she painted, and I just knew that I had found what I needed for a push to paint my kitchen table and chairs.  Click here to see Grammee Linda's post about her chairs. 
In her blog she told that she had used Old Century Paint to do her chairs, and what paint to use had been one of the reasons I hadn't done mine.  I went to their website and located a dealer about an hour from me.  


This is the color the table and chairs were before:

Yes, I know you are wondering why I didn't do this sooner.  Call it apathy, call it lazy, call it chicken.  I call it a little of all three.

I had decided to do this before my sister came to NY.  So I decided to go ahead and work on it while she was there.  It turned into a painting party because my other sister, Chele and her daughter Lizzie, my nephew Mikey, Libby and I all ended up having a hand in the painting.  Mikey and Chele served as supervisors.  Lizzie, Libby and I all did a little painting.  (What a great time!  I will never forget painting my table and chairs.)

We used chip brushes just like Grammee Linda had mentioned in her blog.  My sister thinks things would have turned out better if we had used better brushes, but after really reading the directions on the can I noticed that you aren't supposed to paint within 24 hours of rain.  We were painting during pouring rain!  Guess that might be a factor in the resulting paint job looking a little rough, but I really don't mind. 

Here's what the chair looked like after one coat:

A little rough, and not a full cover.  The paint is really thick.

Here's what the finished product looked like:

I can't help it - I just love it!!  It looks so much better in my kitchen.  And that really matters because we don't have a dining room.  I chose not to distress the chairs because I didn't want the blue to show through.

  I fussed a little about the less than smooth finish and my husband said what all supportive husbands would say: "Our kitchen is kinda dark so it won't really show." Gotta love him.  Especially when I know what a perfectionist he is about his work. :)

This has inspired me to think about painting our stairs. What do you think?

When we added a second story to our house, these were the temporary stairs.  That was circa 1993.