My amazing kitchen table and chair transformation!

I love how so many people have taken their light oak tables and 'easily' transformed them into the Pottery Barn like beautiful black table. So, when I saw this oak table on Kijiji for $20 I knew I had to buy it! Well, that was a year ago and I been living with the ugly oak table and even uglier reddish lattice back chairs since then. After spending countless hours researching and getting no definitive answers on how to paint a table without brush strokes showing, I decided to just do it.

In all my excitement, I forgot to take a before picture of the table...but this is the same table I have:

I got these chairs over 10 years ago (during the "I am still poor after University" stage of our lives) at a local Grocery Store for next to nothing. But they are comfortable and sturdy...here is the before of the chair:

It is pretty embarrassing that I lived with those pieces of furniture together for as long as I did. For an extra dose of embarrassment, I will show you how disgusting the chair seat cushions were (this isn't even the worst chair). Remember, I have two kids and I can blame every spot and stain on them :)

I knew when I recovered these chairs, it had to be with a washable fabric.

Method for the table:
I took the table top off and sanded it and the base lightly in the garage.  I started with a rough sand paper and got finer. I didn't take off all the shine, I just roughed it up and got rid of any scratches.

I cleaned the table top and base with TSP and brought them back into the kitchen and placed them onto a tarp.
I then primed the table top and base with the Zinsser odorless oil based primer. I put on 2 thin coats with a high density foam roller and those cheap foam brushes for the hard to reach places. If there were any rough spots, I lightly sanded them. This product is AMAZING! I used it inside the house and it had hardly any smell. It went on so much easier then I ever expected.

Once the primer was completely dry, I left it for 24 hours just to be sure, I started painting the table black.

I used the Valspar Satin paint in Black (I forgot to take the picture of the can before I painted with it). This product comes pretinted so it is a nice deep black. It is a water based, roll on paint that goes on really thin but sticks like spray paint. I loved that I could still see the grain of the wood through the paint. I did 5 thin coats of this paint, allowing it to dry 8 hours in between each coat of paint. I used the same type of roller and a good brush for the edges.

A piece of advice to anyone wanting to do this: The hardest part for me was not to touch the paint before it dried. I would see a small imperfection and I would want to touch it up and fix it immediately. This makes it a million times worse. So let flaws dry because you will probably not notice them later or you can always lightly sand in between.

Here is the after of my beautiful table..can you hear me oooohhing and aaaahhing :) :

  

I struggled with roller marks but after every coat they got a little better and as the paint cured they diminished even more. I am still toying with the idea of putting one more coat of paint on and maybe doing a top clear coat. But we will see.

So on to the chairs. 

I had no intention of painting the chairs because they were so ugly but when I priced out some nice leather ones, the cheapest I could find was $150 per chair. What is the point of being frugal with the table when I am spending $600 on chairs? So I thought what would be the worst thing to happen if I paint them and they don't work out...I have to buy chairs. What I planned to do anyway.

I didn't sand the chairs at all. I took off the seats (4 screws) and primed with a roller and small foam brush.

 I painted them with the same paint and foam roller that I did the table with. These were far more forgiving than the table because there were far fewer smooth surfaces. But they turned out amazing.

I bought 1 1/2 yards ($20) of outdoor fabric (both stain and water resistant) for the cushions and my loving husband recovered them one night I went out and he was home alone. How sweet!

Here is the amazing after photo of the chairs:

Don't you just love the fabric!!!

 

 I wish I did this a year ago...can you believe it?

Cost: $10 for the primer, $10 for the paint, $20 for the fabric and everything else we had on hand.  $40 for a NEW kitchen set!