New to Us - Table and Chairs

When Leah insisted that she was tooo big for her high chair and that she wanted to sit at the table like all of us, it expedited the need for a new dining set. A humongous THANK YOU goes out to my sister Kalene, who gave us her old dining set with six chairs vs our four. It was a great, solid wood set that had been treated really well but didn't quite fit into the eventual grand decorating scheme for our house. But with a lot of hard work and even more black paint, it looks amazing now. First Kris secured any loose legs, arms or dowels with screws and gorilla glue. Then we sanded them all down, the steel wool on the spindles was the hardest. Next I washed them all with TSP substitute. The chairs we decided to spray paint and so I first sprayed them with Rustoleum Primer in brown, 2 coats. Then I used Rustoleum spray lacquer in black for a top coat, 4-5 coats. This is what took soooooo much paint. I used 7 cans of primer and 15 cans of lacquer on 6 chairs. I just kept going back, and going back to Home Depot for more paint. For the table, my cousin - in-law a professional painter recommended painting it by hand. Per his recommendation I used Zinser Bullseye Primer - that's a latex primer- tinted grey. Then I painted it with Porterguard Oil based enamel in black satin. Because our table will be well loved for many years to come by our family of 5+ I protected it with polyurethane, 2 coats gloss and 1 coat satin. Total cost - about $150. But look at it now........

Of course, it's not perfect but I am thrilled. I looks gorgeous and when the chairs get dinged up, as they will, I can just wash them down and hit them with another coat of lacquer. We are also protecting the table with the clear vinyl heavy duty tablecloth.

I'm posting my re-do on A Soft Place to Land http://asoftplacetoland-kimba.blogspot.com/2009/09/diy-day-and-giveaway_23.html. Check out all of the other fun DIY projects.