That's a nice seat, ma'am

This fall I was on a quest for new chairs for our dining table. They needed to be small, lightweight...and not $100+ per chair. I search high and low and finally stumbled upon some great chairs at the local flea market. Thanks to my mad negotiating skill (or more likely, the fact that it was 1 hour before the close of the market for the month), I scored these chairs for about $8 each:



I got them home, cleaned off the dirt, and decided they needed a little TLC. The finish was less than perfect, the seats an icky blue vinyl.

The before:


But I had become convinced that I had scored some awesome vintage chairs and needed to clean them up right. Strip the varnish, sand down the stain, restain and refinish.

I tried several different methods to get these chairs shaped up. I exposed myself to no less than 3 different toxic strippers, effectively shortening my life by at least 2 months. I sanded until my hand went numb. Then I got out the power sander and sanded some more. Choice words were said and I still was no closer to completion.

Then more choice words were said when I was sitting in a local bar with my honey and realized my tuckas was parked on the EXACT SAME chair I had been working on refinishing!


Yes, my priceless antiques were actually old restaurant chairs. Ha!

The good news? Now I had no guilt about whipping out the spray paint. I had those chairs painted in no time, sans choice words. Add some new fabric to the seats and you have my new and improved chairs for Le Cafe du Moi.

The after:



Just in time to be filled with bottoms for holiday dinners!