Mismatched Painted Dining Room Chairs

Have you ever started a project that turned out to be a whole lot more time consuming than you'd have ever imagined but you had to keep going because you told everyone you would and also, it's your friggen dining room table that you use daily?!?

In the end I have absolutely no regret about striping down our dining room table and painting the chairs in crazy colours but boy-oh-boy did it take hours and weeks to pull off!

It all started when I bought a can of red and pink paint off fb marketplace (how good is that resource!) If your are from around here, you know that I ended up painting my lowboy in the pink, which is where I caught the chalk paint bug from and then decided to re-haul our dining room table.  Ben again wasn't opposed but he wasn't for it, just in this happy place of letting me go crazy :) 

In our years of renting we've only had one dining room table and even then it was owned by the previous renter.  We ended up using that table soooooo much that the thought of leaving it behind was a little sad so Ben contacted the owner who said we could keep it *gasp*. Ben gave her $50 for her kindness and now we have this amazing solid/perfectly sized table.  The only thing that bugged me about the furniture was its dark stain and gloss lacquer and after spending way too long on pinterest and seeing the possibilities of chalk painted furniture the wheels of motion begun turning inside my brain.

 The table before (in our old rental)

This was my life for 3 weeks with an added 4 weeks for the table! Each chair took a day for each coat (three in total) then a sand back, a wipe down and a clear gloss coat with a further week to dry out.

Choosing the colours was a mission in itself. I went through so many options and even after settling on my colours I still left the store with a whole different selection. I should point out that the lovely owner of Canterbury Blue was super helpful and led me down a more green/blue path which ties it altogether nicely. 

Oh gosh the table! So I decided to do the table whilst Ben was away for his hitch, okay 6 weeks no drama, i'll get it done.  Ben told me a couple of weeks into the hitch that he'd be coming home early, no probs, I'll just get started on that table now. It wasn't until the first day of sanding (electric sanding!) that I realised the whole process was going to take a loooooong time! Despite frantically sanding away every moment I had free, Ben came home to a plastic trestle table set up in the dining room :P I was only a few days off from finishing the sanding but I still needed to seal it + let it sit for a week to dry! I'm really happy I sanded it back, I love the light wood so much more than the dark and despite people's reservations about the painted chairs everyone seems to agree the table is a vast improvement :)

 We've been living with the table now for a few weeks and the only thing I might change in the future is to add in a few light natural wood chairs in mismatched shapes to break it up even more!

The glorious, glorious chairs! I'm committed to stealing one as my office chair, just not sure which one yet!