When we moved last year, we realized that our dining set didn’t fit in our new dining room. So we put our set up for sale on Kijiji and scoured the ads for a replacement. We found a fantastic local source in Alexandria and got a reclaimed wood harvest table with a bench. Gorgeous, solid and exactly what we wanted. Plus, we found two vintage solid mahogany end chairs with intricate claw feet. Woot!
And then, we found these…
A set of six solid wood 1940’s mahogany chairs. $150 for all six! Jackpot!
A friend introduced me to chalk paint (the ‘miracle paint that can go over anything without prep or primer’!!). That is, anything except of course 1940’s mahogany that you would like to paint with white chalk paint 😉
Go figure. Apparently there is something about 1940’s mahogany that bleeds into white chalk paint, resulting in pink…
No thanks! (We have enough pink in this house as it is…) And of course we wanted the chairs to be white. I was still intrigued to try the chalk paint, so rather than risk more pink decor, I simply did a single coat of primer first. No biggie.
It should be noted that we started our chair project in the summer. And it took pretty much all fall and winter to complete – not because it was a big job or because there were complications, but simply because life happens (i.e. kids start JK, moms go back to work, and it gets cold, and painting in a cold garage is less enjoyable than painting on a sunny day on your lawn…..).
So, after a quick coat of primer and 2 coats of chalk paint, we lightly sanded the chairs and swirled on some wax (a protective layer to cover the chalk paint with a silky-to-the-touch finish). For the wax coat, we moved the chairs inside (so the wax – and I – wouldn’t freeze).
It took a small amount of convincing for my matching-and-symmetry-loving husband to agree to the mis-matched seat fabrics, but we came to a compromise: matching yellow-grey colour scheme with mis-matched patterns. Hooray for Pinterest (to help demonstrate to hubby how lovely the end result could be 😉 )!
I have a bit of a fabric collection that I keep on hand for patching holes, making crafts or building forts. However, to get the matching colour scheme, we needed to get a few additional small pieces from a fabric shop. We cut the fabric to size and stapled the fresh patterns right over top of the merlot-coloured faux leather. Et voila!
Because we have young children and we regularly eat at the table (two, three, or even four family meals per day), we also used some fabric guard to protect our work (protect it somewhat, at least… perhaps the white, yellow and light grey colour scheme is better-suited to families who are past the pre-school age?) Meh. When the time comes, it will not be a difficult task to remove the fabric, throw it in the wash and re-staple – OR simply re-cover another (3rd) layer over top of the worn seat fabric. Then again, maybe by that point, we’ll just decide to go sans furniture like Katy Bowman and eat picnic-style on the floor 🙂
Anyway – Success, at last!
We are so happy with the results.
[The mirror, rug and sideboard/buffet (aka my ‘fermentation station’) were all Kijiji finds, too!]
Unique. Fun. Affordable. We love our one-of-a-kind random bohemian farmhouse dining room.
Our floors may be dusty, our mirror and windows may be smudgy, but there is lots of love and laughter in this space (… of course, it usually isn’t this tidy!!!!).
Eat well. Cook with your kids. Embrace natural movement. Reduce waste. Be well. 
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