How I upcycled my dining chairs

     Following on with my series of upcycled furniture, here I show how I tackled my very beaten up old dining chairs. These six seats are part of a dining set I bought from a friend for £40 about four years ago, although their true age is much older and they originally came to me with heavily worn snot green velour seats. I swiftly bought a couple of packs of scarlet red pillowcases and with the help of a staple gun reupholstered them and they’re been red ever since. However, the varnish on the frames has worn off and they needed the familiar upcycling treatment that I’m now very fond of.

The original chairs

     One thing I haven’t done though is the table. The wooden table is a six seater with a pull out middle section to make it suitable for eight seats if needed, and because it’s always been covered and well cared for the table is pristine so I couldn’t even think of sanding it down and repainting it. I invested in a Rob Ryan print table cloth from Wild & Wolf that drapes over the sides of the table to both protect it and disguise the fact that the table is still varnished wood. The ends of the dark wooden legs sort of blend into the shadows so I’m quite happy with this compromise.

I am a Rob Ryan addict

     As for the chairs, it was very much a similar routine to my earlier blogs regarding upcycling so I won’t describe the process in detail here. The seats were unscrewed and then the frames sanded down. Despite being a relatively small surface area the shape of the frames made this quite a tricky task and as you can see I did this in the garden so there was more space.

Freshly sanded

     For continuity in style I used the same paint and wax polish as before to treat the chairs, as well as the 120 gauge sandpaper to distress the edges. Considering I have been giving all of my new furniture two coats of paint it’s impressive how far the paint goes, cost per project must only work out at a couple of pounds, which is great and much cheaper than some specialist upcycling paints on the market.

First coat of paint

The chair production line

     Once painted and finished the red seats were reattached and the vibrant contrast of the pale grey and scarlet mirrors the bold colours in the Rob Ryan table cloth so I’m very happy. Once again it makes the dining area appear much larger as the old dark set was soaking up so much of the light. 

Back view

The bookcase I upcycled is just visible to the right here

Distressing visible on the edges

Tucked in with the new table cloth

Plenty more upcycling blogs to come!

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