Dining Furniture Renovation ~ New House Design

http://blissfulrhythm.blogspot.com/2011/09/dining-furniture-renovation.html

Serendipity

A Beeautiful Transformation

A couple weeks back, I was looking for inspirational ideas to transform the chairs to our dining room set.

I came across this bee and wreath graphic at

Graphics Fairy

and thought – this is it!

This is the idea I had envisioned.

This is the reason I call this serendipity!

This is the pattern on the curtains I'd made for this room a few years back.

I had put off redoing the dining room set for several years.

For two reasons.

Reason one – my husband is not too enthusiastic about painted furniture.

Reason two – this set was originally my parents. They bought it when moving to South Carolina in the late 70’s from an antique store that was in an old barn.

After my father’s death my mother downsized and gave this set to me.

I have cherished it since, especially now that they’re both gone to Heaven.

This dining room set has been the scene for family discussions, meals, games and parties. It is very important to our family.

To apply the wreath and bee I used the mod podge method I used on the two garden pots I shared with you here. I think it did pretty well, but with the next few chairs I plan to trip the graphic closer and to apply less mod podge around it –the stain was affected by the surrounding dried mod podge.

The bee and wreath is on the backside of the top of the chair and on the inside I put a Fleur de Lis with a wreath.

Prior to applying the graphic, I painted the chair with a combination of Old White Chalk paint and yellow house paint to complement the curtain. I wanted a yellow color, but not too dark and wanted to be able to apply the paint without pretreating the chair.

I used a combination stain with poly – Mahogany – to age the chairs some. I applied the stain and lightly wiped it until I was satisfied with the result.

Now, my husband likes it so much he thinks I should try to market myself! How’s that for confident support!

My children like it and are inspired to try refinishing furniture on their own.

What I plan to do with the table is to refinish the top with the stain alone and paint the legs similar to the chairs.

Now, here’s my dilemma.

I am not sure which fabric to use for the chair’s seat.

I have on hand these three fabric options.

First – the same fabric I used for the two red chairs.

Second – this silky red fabric

Third – this red fabric with chickens and roosters on it.

The first fabric is the most sturdy, most logical choice, but I was hoping for something a little different and red.

I am placing a poll on my sidebar with four options

Fabric A

Fabric B

Fabric C

None of the above.

I haven’t ‘polled’ my husband yet, I’ll let you know the result and what he thinks.
But Wait! There's more!
I asked my daughter if she had any fabric that might work.
This is what we came up with.
Note on fabric below:
the background color appears blue in the pictures, but is
actually black - the carpet - I hope to replace
I am dreaming of a honey-colored carpet with reds, golds,
greens, blues.....