Shabby Chic Bistro Table

I always like to keep an eye out for free furniture to refinish.  Sometimes I find things in the free section of craigslist, sometimes things come from free cycle, sometimes a Facebook group, sometimes the local reuse center, sometimes curbside rescue, and sometimes friends.  I have a growing pile of items in my "to be refinished" queue (meaning there is ugly furniture placed strategically all over my house, in my garage, and on my back porch).  Some things are waiting to be fixed up for my house, some I intend to fix up to sell, and some things are simply waiting for something else to complete them.  This set is an example of the latter two.  The table came from a free site (craigslist I think).  It came with cigarette burns and a boy's named carved into the top.  

Not much to look at, but it had drop leaves and was structurally sound.  Without much (any) architectural detail to make it interesting, I knew this table would need a somewhat elaborate paint job and some cute chairs to make it sellable.  Enter my fantastic friends who keep an eye out for me.  Her neighbor was moving out and placing mountains of furniture at the curb.  I made SEVERAL trips and now can't get to the shelves in my garage... lol, eventually I'll finish all of these projects!  At any rate, one of the things I came back with was a pair of cute, petite wooden chairs.  They seemed a good fit.

    

First step, as always, was a good sanding.  Since the woods didn't really match, my intention was to completely paint the chairs and leave the base of the table intact.  I changed my mind when I saw the chairs post sanding.  They looked great just sanded!  Ok, so I guess I'll have to paint the table base.

I painted the entire table with primer  . . . . and the brush left awful deep brush mark grooves everywhere.  Sigh, ok. . . maybe a roller next time, or spray primer.  So I sanded it again.  Nope still there.  So I sanded some more.  grrr.... new lesson learned.  All sandpapers are not created equal, regardless of grit).  The sandpaper from the dollar store sucks.  :P So eventually I sanded away the brush marks, lol, and made my way to my strange assortment of free paints.  There is all sorts of talk on furniture refinishing blogs and whatnot about the best paint and finishes to use for furniture refinishing.  Chalk paint, milk paint, wax, poly, etc.  I have always been more of a "work with what I have" kinda girl.  Acrylic latex house paint?   yep.  That'll do.  I chose some leftovers of colors that I had already mixed for other projects and made some minor adjustments.  To tie the chairs in with the table visually I decided to paint the seats.

I painted the table base, edges and one chair seat with a grayish turquoise, the table top white, and the other chair seat yellow.  Now, for that "elaborate" paint job.  I had been loving stencil work lately, but can't afford to buy the ones for sale on the internet.  No matter, I'm handy with an Xacto knife and it only has to survive one project, so I'll make my own.  I found a picture I liked, printed it out, traced it, and spent an afternoon cutting tiny shapes out of an overhead transparency sheet.  Yeah, that took a while, but it was way more affordable!

Now there are lots of different ways to paint with a stencil, but stippling seems to be the most fool proof for this sort of job.  They, of course, make special round brushes for this purpose.  I just used an old acrylic brush I had in a drawer that had some bulk to it and it seemed to work fine.  I randomly (but somewhat evenly) stenciled blue flowers all over the table top and let it dry.  Then orange, dry.  Then yellow, dry.  I lightly wiped off the stencil between colors but didn't get too crazy.  I would rather have a bit of dried paint on it than tear it after all.  Next the "shabby chic" effect.  I sanded the whole thing down again, making sure to sand some places more than others, especially the edges so it looked like wear and tear.

Since this table was intended for an eat-in kitchen or something of the like, it needed to be able to stand up to use and food.  The chairs needed a little bit of strengthening, so I replaced older somewhat stripped screws with newer slightly larger screws and tightened everything up.  I still needed a clear coat of some sort though.  My original plan was to coat the table top and chair seats with some brushing lacquer that I had picked up from the reuse center for free, but after doing some research I discovered that using that over my paints could end badly.  Apparently the solvents in the brushing lacquer are so strong that it could actually dissolve some of the paints underneath.  Sheesh... that would be disappointing after all that work.  So I bit the bullet and paid full price for a new can of polycrylic.  I know, totally not me right?  But, sometimes you just have to have the right tool for the job.  I followed the instructions on the can precisely, and applied 3 coats to the table top and chair seats.  It worked great.  Here is the before and after of my shabby-chic bistro table! . . . and yes, it is sold.  Hope you like it!

The Garden Bed

Recently, my neighbor across the street moved out and a group of people spent a few weeks cleaning out the house.  Over the course of that time they placed several things at the curb that I brought home.  One of the neatest things they threw out was this Ethan Allen 4 post bed frame.  Of course, it was filthy beyond measure and had a couple of things coming apart, but that's just elbow grease.

I took this picture after I cleaned it and glued the pieces back together, so you can't really see how much work I did there, but suffice it to say that after seeing all the gunk that what was on it I didn't really want to use it in my house for a bed frame.  Instead, I decided to refinish it as a garden "bed" frame.

After sanding the whole thing down I gave it a few coats of exterior paint and added a mesh trellis.  Inside the bed frame I am attempting to grow a container vegetable garden.  I haven't had a lot of luck vegetable gardening in the past, but I am willing to try again!  I figure the bed will look really cute with all sorts of vining vegetables growing on it.

A few months later it has some life!  Still have some issues with my brown thumb, lol.... I think I need to move the whole thing to a more sunny spot (that'll be interesting with my tomato plant all grown up through it).  The bed frame is holding up fairly well to the elements I suppose.  We have had a REALLY wet couple of months and some cracks have appeared in the bed frame from the constant moisture.  I may attempt to fill the cracks with wood filler and put some more exterior paint on it to give it some more life (if it's ever dry long enough)...  but I knew a piece of wood furniture was likely to have a limited life span out in the elements when I started anyway.

Once I get some more landscaping accomplished I plan to move this to a more manicured looking spot with more sunlight.  Everything is still a work in progress around here :).