It’s hard for me to find furniture in the stores that I love, because it is all over priced, not the right color and to top it all, it’s so poorly made. So I go to garage sales early on a Saturday morning. I drag my husband and two lazy dogs out of bed (kicking and screaming) and we go hunting for treasures (they all love it once they get over the shock).
It’s very strange how often I find what I am looking for. I have something in my mind that I want and there it is. I don’t know how that happens. I am not a believer in “telling the universe what you want”, but when I concentrate on something, somehow it seems to come my way. Oh golly, I must have lived in California for too long. I will be talking about crystal vibrations music next.
This time around, I wanted to find some dining room chairs that I could paint turquoise. My new favorite color. I want to fix them up to be ‘Shabby Chic’. And as I was thinking about finding these beautifully made, almost free, curvy wooden chairs, there they were. Nobody wanted them but they were the only thing I was thinking about.
I had already found two others a few weeks prior that were solid, old and just needed lots of sanding and re-painting. I was all set to get to work on my chair project. I always like to have a weekend and evening project to keep my creative side satisfied.
How to repair:
1. I started by getting some good strong gorilla wood glue. I glued all the broken bits back together and used clamps to hold it together. I also found the clamps at an estate sale and I paid $2.50 for 3 of them.
2. Next I sanded them using 100 grit and then finished with 200.
3. I sprayed an undercoat over the entire chair with painter’s Touch flat white primer from Home Depot. It took 2 spray cans. I could have filled all the gaps with wood filler, but the shabby chic thing is all about making it look old and clean but not perfect.
4. I sprayed the chair the final color, with 2 coats. I found Design Master Turquoise satin finish paint at Michael’s. This took 1.5 cans of spray per chair.
It was pretty simple to renovate these old chairs. There seems to be an abundance of discarded furniture just waiting to be loved and brought back to life.
