DIY Dining Chair Makeover

The garbage, it's not just for raccoons and feral cats anymore.

Let's face it. It's generally easier to throw out furniture and decorations when they go out of style rather than renovate it or even bother to sell it. Most sane people just don't want to be bothered with all of that work.

But there is a lot of hidden potential hiding in yesterday's decoration.

All it takes is a little creativity to take curbside rejects and turn them into something brand new and beautiful.

Visiting Tried & Twisted today is my talented mom, "The MommaBar", who recently put a little time and effort into a lucky roadside find to make a spectacular new chair for her sunroom.


While walking in her neighborhood this spring, my Momma spotted an abandoned white dining chair thrown to the curb for the garbage collectors. While the chair was dirty, there was nothing wrong with its structure. So she picked it up and carted it home for this DIY project.

*Actually we forgot to get a before shot, so this before picture is from online. There are a few differences, but it's close enough if you use your imagination.

While white is still going strong among the country chic community, a lot of furniture stores have been unveiling new designs that creatively pair a bold pop color with the beauty of the natural wood. Here's how MommaBar brought that warm natural look to her sunroom.

How To Re-Paint a Dining Chair:

Step 1: Disassembling the top of the chair made this process easier and, since the chair's cheaper glue had already dried up, the chair was loose at the seams and easy to pull apart. You can either pull the top and legs apart or else you can line painter's tape around the base of every rung and leg.

Step 2: Sand off the white paint with a random orbit palm power sander. This stage might take a little while.

She decided to leave some areas a little more ragged for that antique look by sanding deeper into the wood once the paint was removed. You can see that effect on the seat base.

Step 3: Spray paint selected areas with an accent color. She used Valspar leafy rise satin for a soft sage color.

She added an extra touch of trim around the seat base by lightly applying extra paint with an angled paint brush.

Step 4: Stain the seat base with a basic oak wood stain.

Step 5: Reassemble your chair with fresh wood glue applies to the joints.

Depending on your model of chair, you may want to drive an angled piece of wood or a wedge to help hold the pieces together. Let me try to explain with a little woodworking terminology.  The holes in the seat base  would be called a "mortise" and the chair rung end would be called a tenon. When you insert the tenon into the mortise or hole, it might have some wiggle room. By driving a wooden wedge up into the tenon, you cause the chair rung to expand and fit snugly into the mortise. Get it? Got it. Good!

Voila! A pretty unique accent chair from what was a trash-bound, unoriginal mass-produced Walmart staple.

Naturally, you can chose any accent color for pop that you'd like. In this case, MommaBar matched her chair accent color with a corner hutch, that she of course made herself as well. She's got mad skillz.

So that's it for today's post! Thank you for sticking with me through my summer hiatus, and I'll see you next week as I continue to give new projects a try and a little twist. 

Have you found some lovely furniture by the roadside and just didn't know what to do with it? Do you prefer a modern pop color, natural wood, or country chic white? Let me know what you think!

Linking at:

Flaunt it Friday, Frugal Friday, Link Party Palooza, DIY Sunday Showcase,  TGIF Link Party, The DIY'ers, Work it Wednesday, Whatever Goes Wednesday, Fluster Creative Muster, Whimsy Wednesday,