Vacation Photo Break

I still have a lot more photos that I want to put up but they will have to wait.  That’s not because they aren’t ready; it’s because I’ve been busy with another project.  This one began before I left for the Maritimes.  I took my old dining room chairs, which are still good and come in handy sometimes, and made them better.  Before the trip, I gave the legs and backs on the four chairs a light sanding, a good cleaning, and two coats of flat, black, inexpensive paint.  They didn’t look amazing at that point.  Since coming back, I hauled up one of the chairs, lightly distressed it with fine sandpaper, cleaned it again and then put on a coat of polyurethane.  Wow!  Does that chair ever look better now!  Instead of an old dinged up chair that was given to me fourteen years ago (the chairs and table had belonged to Louis’ grandparents and sat in storage for a while before they were handed down to us), I now have a chair that looks contemporary and fits nicely with my new dining room chairs.  This was so easy to do!

The chair on the left (the one without the basket) is the one that is finished.  It’s not obvious in the picture because the lighting in that room isn’t great and my camera can’t handle that so well.  I don’t have a before picture to show the difference the black paint makes.  You just have to imagine the chair legs and backs the same colour as the seats but with a lot of dings from use and moving.

You can see the distressing I did quite a bit better on this closer up detailed shot.  That one chair really looks fantastic now.  I can’t wait to pull out all these chairs (once the other three are done!) the next time we have guests.  I’m not embarrassed about them any more.