I’m so-so-so excited to share my kitchen table makeover with you guys!

You know how sometimes you get a dreamy vision of how you want to create, update or change something and then when you attempt to create that dreamy vision, it actually turns out exactly as you envisioned?!  And then you just really impress yourself?

Yah, that happened right here!  This is exactly how I pictured my table to be! And I must say that it’s perfect!

This table was such a huge annoyance to me. Every time I catch a glimpse of those nasty seats…it’s like somebody dragging their nails on a chalkboard or rubbing two forks together (*shutter* I hate that sound). It really was one of the most embarrassing pieces of furniture in my home because it was im-possible to keep the seats clean. I hated it. Hated it!  Sure, they were clean-able, but I had to clean them after every meal in order to maintain them!  Do you know how many minutes of my life have been wasted on maintaining kitchen table chair seats??  Ridiculous!  Needless to say, but with 6 children over the course of several years my expectation of clean seats faded. And I just plain gave up!

Here’s a before:

See, told you, they were baaaad!

^^^That is oh-so-embarrassing!^^^

Because I hated the chairs so very much, I’ve had the idea of doing a kitchen table makeover for a long, long time.  But I was dreading it because I knew it was going to be a process.  And then I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do with colors/fabrics.  I can be so indecisive in my choices sometimes and I get really annoyed with myself over that.  With the new house move coming up, I was cringing at the thought of bringing this old nasty furniture to my new beautiful house!

So, the moment I saw this collection of chevron stripe duck cloth at Hobby Lobby I knew it was meant for my kitchen table makeover!  SCORE!  That got me excited and I started making plans.

The first step in my kitchen table makeover was the prep.  The prep work is the worst work!  UGH.  But it is the absolute most important work!  Never slack on the prep.  I’ve learned the hard way.  If you are painting old furniture, you need to be sure that the piece is clean, clean, clean.  So, I scrubbed and scraped off years of gunk from all the cracks and crevices.  Took forever.  Once I was done, I lightly hand sanded over the pieces with a 120 grit.  Nothing major just enough to take a little sheen off and give the paint something to adhere to.

I started out with a DIY chalk paint recipe.  This was my first experience with chalk paint.  I thought painting the table with chalk paint would be the best route because the weather was not agreeable to painting in the garage or outdoors.  I like spray paint and that’s what I really wanted to do because it’s easy!  But with all the hype about chalk paint I thought I’d give the eco friendly option a try so I could paint indoors.  It worked.  No complaints.  The Paint adhered well and dried fast.

The only problem was that I found it took several (several) coats to get the coverage I needed.  It was a major pain in the you know what!  I had the table painted but after the 4th coat of paint on the spindles of one chair + all the drips and brush marks to go with it + 3 days of painting + the frustration + juggling life in between…I could not handle it anymore!  I threw in the paint brush and went with the spray paint that I know and love.

At that point, we happened to get a break in the cold weather and so I set up in the backyard and made a trip to Home Depot and picked up some of my favorite spray primer.  First, I primed the remaining chairs.  It took all of about 20 minutes!  Then I flipped the chairs over and sprayed primer to get the different angles.  Another 20 min.  Spraying those chairs was so awesomely easy, so I grabbed my paint sprayer and finished spraying over the primed chairs with my paint!  Spraying is SO much easier.  I love the sprayer!  It made painting the spindles way. easier.  And the finish turned out much smoother.  No brush marks, no drips.  I love the finish I got with the sprayer!

Once the painting was done, I worked on the seats.  This was the easy part.

I cut the fabric with about 4″ extra around each side using the chair seat as a guide.  Then, I stapled one side leaving the corners unstapled.

Then I  turned the seat to the opposite side and stapled pulling the fabric taught.  I repeated steps 1 and 2 on the remaining 2 sides.  Then I worked on the corners.  There was no rhyme or reason to my method.  I worked in small pieces pulling them whichever way I needed to create a smooth transition over the edge.  I stapled each small section down, yes, I used a bunch of staples (probably way to many).   Before I stapled, I played around with folding the fabric over so I could get an idea of where I was heading.

Once I had all the seats covered, I moved on to putting a clear furniture upholstery vinyl over top.  Gotta keep those cute chairs protected!  I found my upholstery vinyl at JoAnn in the home interior fabric section on the big rolls.  I secured it over the fabric the same way.

It is a little more tricky to work with and I ended up with some creases on the corners but they don’t look bad.

Here’s the after:

Can I just say that I LOVE how my table turned out!  Every morning when I wake up and see it, it’s like a breath of fresh air.

It is so pretty to look at and I just love it.

Bye-Bye ugly seats. Hello fresh, clean-able seating.

I am always amazed at what a little paint can do! And the beauty of  paint is that any-body can do this!

 Thanks for stopping by and looking at my amazing kitchen table makeover.

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Cheers!