Hello all! I am so excited to share with you my post project pictures. I wrote about my project a long time ago that you can read here, but I am reusing the pictures as for some reason I have ZERO of my before pictures(thanks phone). It is actually tragic as the transformation of our DIY kitchen and table refurbishing is startling. To me anyways.

DIY: Do it yourself, or just wait for your husband to come home.

I meant to complete this project, I really did. I surfed Pinterest hard for more hours than I am willing to admit for ideas, how to, fabric, etc. I seriously still feel completely lost when it comes to decorating a home. Thankfully my husband is home from deployment and able to dress this place up. If you popped over to the other post you saw all the broken chairs. and my dire need to work on this project, but I didn’t. I just took to the couch and kept “researching” on Pinterest how to do what I wanted to do. Which, I had no clue how or what to do! Last month before my husband came home, after 7 months of trying to pick a fabric, and lots of googling stumbled across this picture.

Ok, so I am working on getting more organized on my photos, and promise not to lose them all and resort to photos like this much longer. *sigh*

Anyways, this was the exact fabric my husband loved from day one! It was like this was what I was looking for!! I have zero visualization skills. Imagining what a table and chairs will not only turn out, but also look like in my house was so hard for me! I do not know why visualizing what things will look like in the home, it just explains why I just choose not to decorate.

 

How we did it and what it cost to DIY Kitchen Table and Chairs:

Thankfully the enlisted military has been super awesome for us. Ever since moving on base we have not only met great friends but, I learned about so many family help services. One is a thrift store on base, where if you are enlisted, and under a certain rank, you can get items others donate for free. So we were so lucky to have a friend hold them their for us. SCORE: Free table and chairs!

 

So we had a lot advice on paint from people we asked, and people we didn’t. ha-ha. It was so frustrating to try to figure out what was going to last, what kind of paint, brush, let alone the paint color. I applaud those who do this as a business- I was not a fan. I wanted it to be perfect. Every time I find a mistake in our paint I get a little irritated. No kidding there.

My friend who is a paint expert gave me information on  the exact paint we needed and guess what – Lowes had no idea what we were talking about. So we made it work, and it was a little tricky.

How we did it?

I sanded it a bunch, he sanded all the surfaces better.  We did not sand down to natural, we basically sanded away the top varnish to give it a little grip with a variety of 80 to 120 grit sanding blocks. We did this for everything for a while, but it was just taking forever. Just wipe off the dust well to make sure it is dry and clean.  Then we hopped over to Lowe’s and got a good bonding primer to prep our chairs instead. ( A fancy mechanical  sander would have been ideal but we made it work. ) The areas that had damage we repaired with putty and glue.

While that dried for a day we worked on cushions. Which were AWESOME. I am a cushion expert now. Now our seats were in great ( but stinky) shape so all we had to do is tear the old fabric off, de-stink the other persons home off of them. I had ordered the fabric offline when JoAnn Fabrics had 50% off home décor fabric. I ended up getting the outdoor type of fabric that is meant to take a beating/not dry clean only like all the other home décor fabrics. I measured the cushions  with a fabric measuring tape added about 2” around my measurements. ( I did this because I didn’t want to mess up and have too little to work with or our  pattern be off center.)

What worked out perfect was I picked the width of our fabric partially because it also had the perfect amount to cut directly down the middle. I ordered 3 yards and have enough extra to do two more chairs if need be.  We just used a regular staple gun, and worked together to hold the fabric tight, and the corners are tricky at first but we looked at how the original were done before removing and doing our own. It’s a fold and hold technique.  We trimmed them down a little before putting them back into the chairs, it will keep the cat from messing with them. The biggest trick we learned: Center the fabric so your pattern is center, and tack each edge down on the wood with staple to help hold it in place from all four corners. You can remove it so you are able to pull the fabric tighter when you staple it all down. Good thing staples are removable, you can just redo it if your corners or edges do not turn out correctly.

Trying to pick which of our fancy wedding present bowls belong on the table, so at least one escapes the cupboard.

Painting the chairs was so messy, well for me anyways. I didn’t get any pictures of us painting but we found the best luck with our type of paint to use a roller and a nice brush to touch it up. The roller was made for our paint and to give a nice finish. Which I love it, so it did its purpose. It was hard to use a roller at first, but it was trial and error. Tip- Apply the primer to practice– it doesn’t matter and you can sand off any mistakes. Applying the paint we learned quickly how to avoid brush strokes, less paint on the roller and brush. We did 2 coats of our paint with about a day between each coat.

We then used the polyurethane to coat high traffic areas: The table top got two coats, the legs all got one. We tried to find Polycrylic to seal it, and make the top of the table more “hard” and resistant to scratches. We ended up with polyurethane, which is said to make light paints yellow over time. So if you are looking to redo your own furniture, consulting your paint person on which paints and sealer etc. I am happy with ours, but in a few years I may have a different tune if it changes the color.

This dried over night and we applied those fuzzy things to the feet so the chairs do not damage the floor.

I highly recommend doing this last step, it makes it feel so much nicer/ feels protected.

I am not a crafter, or a do it your self home improve-er. This project was such a learning curve, and I feel we just got lucky. There is one chair that you can tell we just didn’t care about anymore. Paint drips and a chipped off part of the chair, we really gave up on that one. Meh. The rest of them are so pretty I do not even care! It’s over!

 

I could not be happier. This entire project was $136! I mean it did really help we got the table and chairs for free, but we did not have any thing to sit on or eat at before- and now we have this! I am really glad we did it together as a project, it was a fun post deployment bonding project.

Question of the day:

Ever completed a home renovation/refurbishing?