Wood Chair Makeover

I have had so much fun on Maxsold.com lately – have you heard of it?

It’s an auction site that people use to downsize or for estate sales. The items are posted on their website by location and then you can bid on anything you choose.

These chairs were an item I picked up the other week:

The auction items are generally much nicer than these – but I was searching for junk in particular, so I picked up these three wooden chairs and a teak plant stand (all in the same lot) for $28. I didn’t really want the plant stand, but we’ll see if we can upcycle it into something or another.

These wood chairs were what I was after – grungy, grimy but solid wood and in one piece.

Because these chairs had years of furniture polish, oil from hands and a lot of grime on them, I decided that sanding them down was the best route to take. It’s the first step in any furniture makeover I do, but for this chair makeover project it also allowed me to smooth out rough edges and even out the grain where it was raised here and there.

Quite the difference eh?

I was SO tempted to stain them, but then I wouldn’t have been able to try the gold dip look I’ve eyeballed, and it wouldn’t have made as compelling a Pinterest image.

Instead I primed all three with two coats of Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3 primer, sanding between coats.

I like to lightly tint the primer before adding the second coat (you can see the left chair is a slightly different colour), this helps me to make sure I haven’t missed any spots.

For this chair makeover I wanted to try out a couple of colours I’ve had sitting in my garage unused; Benjamin Moore’s “Gentleman’s Grey”

and their colour of the year “Shadow”;

Neither of which came out as dark as I’d expected?

I sprayed two coats of each paint on the respective chairs, with drying time in between, and once completely dry, I taped off where I wanted my gold sections with painter’s tape.

I’ll give you a tip here for if you ever decide to try a chair makeover; paint over the tape line with a bit of the original colour paint BEFORE adding the new colour. In the case of this chair makeover, I painted the tape with the Gentleman’s Gray and let dry then painted over that with the metallic gold. Doing it this way will give you a nice, crisp paint line and you won’t see any gold bleeding anywhere.

Remove your painter’s tape and let dry!

I imagine in a darker room the Gentleman’s Gray might have a darker hue, but in the bright sunlight it’s almost a denim colour.

I’m a lover of all things purple, so this chair makeover was my favourite of the two.

I used Benjamin Moore’s Advance formula in the blue – which will continue to harden over time as it cures. The Shadow (purple) was a latex paint in eggshell, so I’ll have to give it a top coat of varnish to prolong the finish.

Tuck one by the front door to hold your purse and keys, or use it as a plant stand. Give one to each of the kids for their desks, or set in a corner to hang blankets on.