The Explanation: We have an awesome little tulip style table that I bought for my first post-college apartment and I had great directors chairs that I used for seating. It was my first place of my own and that set up was my favorite part of my apartment. Future Hubby entered the picture and was less than thrilled about the chairs.
Eventually, we moved in together, to a cute little house with a real dining room. We inherited a vintage dining set from his family, so we sold my chairs and moved the table to the basement. A few years later we move to the lakeshore and back into a much smaller space. The dining set was passed onto other family members and we brought the tulip table back into daily use..... except we now had no chairs.
I continue to be in love with these chairs, and someday, when we have room for a large table again, we will end up buying these.
Photo Credit: Pottery Barn
For now, we were looking for something budget friendly, that wouldn't take up a lot of space.
I bought two of these chairs at Goodwill for $10 total. My grandmother had this style table and chairs in her kitchen (in Maple... not this paint scheme) when I was growing up and I always loved them. They are seriously comfortable chairs. I've spend hundreds, maybe thousands of hours sitting in Grandma's chairs, just like these, so they had a pretty big sentimental pull too.
The Nitty Gritty: These paint on these chairs is UUUGLY! It was also very poorly done in multiple coats. I am a super impatient person and it paid off this time. I ran across automotive spray primer at our home improvement store. It is thicker than regular spray primer and it has very slight texture. My goal was to avoid sanding off the old paint and I thought this might even things out enough to avoid it. I put on 3 very thin coats of automotive primer and then covered it with 4 coats of Krylon gloss Cherry Red. The automotive primer made the paint even without all the sanding. It is not perfect, but for a quick job, I'm quite happy.
Future Hubby brought some polycrylic top coat to help seal it all. It will probably get a good sanding and one more coat of red before I seal it.
The Verdict: Future Hubby is not thrilled about the color. I am. Without the polycrylic they seem to be holding up well, but will do even better with the topcoat. They probably do need a little sanding. There are no ultimate short cuts, sadly. However, there are products that make things a bit easier.
In the end I LOVE these chairs. The solid color highlights the shape of the chair, which is classic farmhouse. I also think of my Grandma every time I sit in them, and about the hours we spent in the kitchen together. I never would have thought such a basic thing would turn my cookie-cutter rented kitchen into the homiest room in our house.
