Upcycled Kitchen Chairs

Recently I came across photos of our house renovation we completed almost three years ago and I realised that at the time I took loads of photos with the intention of creating a blog in the future . Well now this is the future (how weird) so I’m gonna show you how I painted my kitchen chairs and made them look like this:

WARNING! This is a picture of my kitchen pre-baby and pre-stay at home motherhood. This is my super tidy, super organized, fresh flowered kitchen. I can hardly believe myself it ever looked like this (and it did) ‘cause as you all know most of the time it looks like this.

These chairs were big in the 80’s, everybody had them. And the thing is that I understand why, they are solid wood, very hard wearing and quite pretty if you can see behind the varnish.

This was my first spray painting experience. I was excited. Up until the moment I realised I have to sand the varnish off in order to give them a new coat of paint. And I tell you, as much as I love DIY I HATE sanding! Seriously I would rather paint a room top to bottom, including the ceiling and skirting boards than sand a small piece of wood down. Okay maybe if it’s a small piece I'd do it, but a chair? With all the details? No thank you. 

What was the solution then? A multi-surface primer. A girl’s best friend!

And guess what? It worked. :)

And it was actually so easy I surprised myself. I applied a multi-surface primer (one of those you have to apply onto a cloth and then onto the surface). Let it dry according to the manufacturers instruction and then sprayed.

Like this. Looks easy. And it is. 

Do it outdoors though as it’s a smelly smelly job. And wear a mask. Don’t skip that part cause it’s very bad for you! It took approx 10-15 min/chair.

Today, almost 3 years later I’m sitting on the very same chair as we speak. They are chipped in places but we still love them. A protective varnish layer would have been clever to apply on top, but I didn’t and hence the reason why they are chipped. I don’t mind though as it adds character, or so I like to believe.

I rescued these chairs from my father in-laws shed. They were the chairs from the old kitchen table. The very same chairs my husband used to sit on, do his homework on, eat his dinner on. And now our son will hopefully do all these same things on these very same chairs...how cool is that? I spoke about it here on a previous blog post but I'm going to repeat it again. I just love taking an old piece of furniture off the scrapheap and giving it a second chance at life with a bit of love and attention. The colours aren't to everyone's taste but they bring life and fun into our kitchen and are a real talking point with visitors. These chairs are now one of my favourite things in our whole house.

So what do you think? Will you try spray painting soon? The brand I use is called Montana. Available nationwide, I buy mine in O’Sullivans Graphics in Dublin. 5 cans for €20

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