Painted Dining Room Chairs

These are my old dining room chairs.  I loved them, but I didn't have enough of them for my entire family and since they were antique, they were a little wobbly.

I follow @artfulhomestead on Instagram and, fairly often, she posts pictures of her super long table and chairs and I love how it looks and I love the idea that there's a place for everyone.  

         

I follow my local ReStore on Facebook and saw they got a donation of 50 of these "school library" type of chairs and they were $8 each.

I debated, but with my mom's help, I bought 11 of them and we made two trips to get these home.  These chairs are heavy and awkward to carry.  Step 1 was using pliers to get the disgusting carpet strips off the bottoms.  It was a huge pain and I discovered, doing anything 11 times is a lot of work!

Step 2 was sanding.  I used my palm sander to try to remove imperfections and rough up the surfaces.  This was also a pain.  There are a lot of places to try and reach and after doing about half, I didn't think it was making much difference.  

Step 3 was cleaning - some with de-greaser, soap and water.  Some with just a Clorox wipe.  

Step 4 was spray painting (finally).  I did them in batches.  Basically doing two coats all at once.  It was almost exactly 1 can per chair.  The spray paint I used is linked above and if you're doing a spray paint project, I can't stress enough how worth it it is to buy one of these spray attachments.  You just press it onto the can, it's only a few dollars and it makes spraying so much easier.

I let the paint dry for 24 hours.  Step 5 was a clear sealant of spray paint.  For the sealant, I just did one coat per chair and it went further, I think I only needed two cans for all 11 chairs.

 Step 6 was adding Magic Sliders to the bottoms.  (Otherwise they made a terrible scraping sound against the floor.)  On my prior chairs, I used the Magic Sliders that you can stick on.  Those would fall off sometimes and then you'd have one uneven leg.  This time, I learned my lesson and bought the kind you can screw in.  They have worked great - I definitely recommend them.

Then I placed them around the table and felt SO GOOD to be at this point.  It was a long process that lasted the entire summer and fall.

At Thanksgiving they were put into use and it felt so good to have enough, matching, sturdy chairs for my family to sit in!

I second-guessed my decisions some - if I really liked the chairs, if I really wanted them white.  But in the end, I am loving them!