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!

How To Paint a Metal Bed Frame

For my guestroom, I searched Pinterest for inspiration and knew I wanted a bed frame that looked like this:

Or like this:

So I kept an eye on Facebook Marketplace and found a few options and found this listed for sale and decided this was it.

I didn't like the gold and there were a lot of areas where the paint had been chipped off, so I knew I would need to refinish it.  One of the reasons I'm doing this post is because I couldn't find that many online tutorials.

Step one was to obtain the bed.  (Which I did, thanks to the help of my parents!) Step two was to get all the materials.

I stood in the paint aisle in Menards FOREVER. In fact, here is my FB post from that day, explaining.

Here are the paints I was debating between.

I always love the look of satin, but I hadn't really painted metal before. For some reason I was worried it would look dull. So that's why I bought the metallic initially and then ended up with satin finish - which turned out to be perfect and exactly what I wanted.

From Menards, I bought:

medium sander
Krud Kutter deglosser
2 tarps
4 cans of the satin finish spray paint
paint handle (which is TOTALLY worth buying)

I should have bought a painting mask, because I could tell it affected my sinuses not wearing one.

Step three is to prep.  So, I carried each piece to my driveway and filled a bucket with water and dishsoap and got out my gloves and an old washrag and cleaned every piece, making sure to get dirt out of detail/crevice areas.

Then I tried both the deglosser and sanding on two different parts and I recommend sanding.  It's easier and I thought it prepped the pieces better.  And it saves you money to only buy one thing.

After sanding, you need to wipe everything down, I think I used a clean microfiber cloth.

Then I started spraying - following the instructions on the can.  A light coat 8-10 inches away.  Slow back and forth motion.  Ok to do the second a few minutes after the first.  I could tell immediately I made the right choice on the finish.

Then I dragged the tarps into the garage and let them cure for 24 hours.

I actually spread the painting out over two days.  The first day was perfect.  The second day had wind speeds of 25 mph - which was NOT GOOD.  First it blows the paint away from it's target, not coating evenly and making you use more paint.  Second, it blows junk onto your paint.  Make sure you check wind speeds before you start painting.

Then I carried each piece into my guestroom and put it together and it's SO EXCITING!  I haven't bought a mattress for it yet, it'll be a work in progress for a while, but it feels good to have this first step accomplished!