Chelsea's Garage: Follow your instinct {one-of-a-kind dining set}

November 5, 2013

Follow your instinct {one-of-a-kind dining set}

Posted by Chelsea

Hi guys! Have you ever tried something a little 'against the grain' and then felt so glad you did? I love stepping out and trying something different! Such was the case with this spectacular dining set I found a few weeks ago. The cane on the chairs was in perfect condition and, while the lines are simple, I felt like the set had so much potential to be stunning. You may recognize it as the set I posted right after I found it, asking if anyone wanted to customize it for themselves. Without any takers I got to have my own way with this dining set.

BEFORE

AFTER

For me, this refinishing job was a gamble. I really wanted to see some dining sets that had black painted chairs with a grey or off white table. It was the direction I'd been leaning toward from the beginning but just wanted to see if there were any examples of that out there in the great world wide web. I'm telling you, I typed all kinds of things in the Google search box and could not find anything like what I wanted to see. Not. A. Thing. I started to think that if there were no examples of this then there may be a good reason why. Maybe folks had tried it and it turned out terrible! BUT, I figured that paint can always be changed and I really felt that this was the right direction to go with this set.

I gave the chairs 3 coats of Graphite by Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. Graphite is an excellent choice if you want to get a really great vintage looking black with a matte finish. I wanted the cane on the chairs to be highlighted and I think the Graphite achieves that beautifully. To contrast the strength that dark chairs can have in a room I painted the table in French Linen, (a warm grey with a taupe-y undertone), and then worked in a soft whitewash with Old White, both by Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, (to get a whitewash I simply poured about half a cup of Old White in a plastic cup and mixed in a few tablespoons of water - I brushed the mixture on a few widths of the table at a time and then immediately wiped it off with pieces of torn t-shirt). When wiping off the whitewash with the rags, the paint pulled up in areas along the edge which I just let be for a beautifully worn look.