When hubby and I moved from Florida to North Carolina, we ended up getting scammed by the moving company. Very long story short, our stuff was held hostage, we had to pay a lot of money to get it back, and almost every piece of furniture was damaged.
The important thing is the important things were returned and were somehow, miraculously, not damaged. My great-grandfather's violin and the doll house my grandfather hand built that I will pass down to baby girl are all safe. That is what really matters.
Now...the other part of this story is that all of the damaged furniture gave me a very long list of projects. I am hoping I can salvage each piece by repairing the damage or completely refinishing the piece.
Here's what our dining room chairs looked like after the movers got ahold of them:
This is just one of the 6 chairs and they all look like this.
So I broke this project down into a few steps. Here's how I tackled refinishing my dining room chairs.
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I was really upset when all of this happened, but I tried to take it as a "glass half full" kind of moment. I had the opportunity to refinish my furniture to match the new house. I bought a whole bunch of rugs that were crazy on sale for Amazon's Prime day sale. Here is the one I found for our dining room.
I loved the blue and grays of this rug and how they contrasted with our black modern looking dining room table. So these were the colors I was going for.
Repair the damage.
There are chunks missing from the chairs. I can't paint straight over those. So I needed to find a way to patch the wood and with something that was paintable. I ordered this kit from Amazon as well (thank you Prime delivery!). What I loved about this kit is that it had a variety of colors and I could blend them together to match exactly the color I needed. This would be useful in future repairs I knew I needed to do. It also comes with small paint brushes you can use to add in wood grain with darker filler later on. Perfect!
For this project, I used the "wood white" filler because I knew I was going to paint over it.
I put a small amount in and used the yellow scrapper tool to smooth it out flush with the rest of the chair leg. It dried pretty quickly but I waited at least 24 hours before starting to paint to give it plenty of time to cure.
Next step: Off to Home Depot!!!
I love Home Depot and Lowes both. I just happened to be in Home Depot when I remembered I needed paint for my chairs.
Did you know they have clearance paint????
It is one of my favorite places to check for inspiration. If I see a pretty color, I'll buy the can, even if I don't have a project. Why? Because I always have projects!
I tried to find colors in that beautiful rug that would work well to accent the rug and add color to the room. These are HGTV Home- Sherwin Williams Stone Isle and Slate Tile. I also chose to go with a gloss finish.
Two coats of paint later, here's the finished product:
I love how these came out! You can't even tell there was a chunk of the leg missing. I was highly impressed with how well the wood filler kit fixed all the damage.
Next step in this project will be to recover the seats with new cushions and pretty (kid-and-hubby-spill resistant) fabric. But for now, I can eat dinner with my family and smile every time I see my beautiful chairs.
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