Paris Grey painted chairs

Over the past few months I have been building up quite a collection of dining chairs. As useful as they are for sitting on, standing on, storing and displaying things on, and generally making the place feel more homely, there are only so many that we can fit into our tiny flat. I have now conlcuded that this number is five. We have two lovely spindly ones from my mum and dad, an even spindlier one that used to belong to Jim's Grandma, and an extra, younger, chunkier one we picked up from a charity shop when the need to seat 4 people became absolutely desperate.

The latest acquisitions came from the one and only freecycle.org and were a lovely sturdy pair of wooden dining chairs:

They were painted lovely colours, but had seen better days. I wanted to make our mismatched dining chair collection feel slightly more uniform and part of the same family, so looked into painting them, or at least a few of them the same colour. I began by giving these two a good wash down in the front garden and waited for them to dry while sitting in the last bit of autumn sunshine back in September.

That morning I had dragged Jim to The Forest Bailif a beautiful interior decoration and furniture shop in Raynes Park, where I picked up a sample pot of Annie Sloane's chalk paint in Paris Grey. This composition of paint is absolutely amazing. It has a rugged appearance but soft texture to it and you don't need to sand down or prime the item you are painting before applying the chalk paint. A brilliant time saver for impatient people like me!

Having confirmed that I loved the Paris Grey - this was a mighty achievement as I am so indecisive, but loved the colour for it's name (a sentimental reminder of our trip to Paris earlier this year) and also because it goes with everything in our living/dining room - I dragged Jim to a second Annie Sloane stockist - Tomlinsons in lovely Dulwich Village, where I splashed out on a whole litre pot of the Paris Grey chalk paint and some protective clear wax.

And this was the final result, after two coats of the paint and one of the wax:

Next on the list - two more Paris Grey chairs, and possibly a purple one thrown into the mix??!

Reborn chest of drawers

I am a member of freecycle and love to regularly browse the emails that get sent to me by people offering bits and bobs that they no longer want or need for free (check it out! uk.freecycle.org)

I recently acquired a lovely old chest of drawers through freecycle. As soon as I had collected it - with the help of Jim and the guy getting rid of it to get it in the car with all the seats folded down - and then struggled with Jim to get it up the stairs to our flat, I realised I may have not thought about the consequences of it being quite so large...

Nevertheless, we found a home for it in the corner of the living room under the telly:

I considered keeping it stained dark for a brief period, but it was in such a run down condition it needed sanding anyway and then redoing, which would have been a fair chunk of work. I set out with the intention of sanding it down and then seeing what it looked like before deciding to restain or varnish it. I took off the brass handles and put them to one side, discovering that one of the screws from one of the handles was missing in the process...I have been scouring eBay ever since to find a reasonable matching set!

Using an electric sander and some sandpaper in a few different levels of coarseness, Jim and I sanded the whole chest of drawers over the course of a couple of sunny Saturday mornings. I then wiped it down with a damp cloth.

 

This is what it now looks like. I love the natural colour and patterns within the wood, and aside from the lack of handles, I am very pleased and plan on leaving it like this. Just for protection I polished the top of the chest of drawers with wax polish to keep it from scratches and marks.