Transform Furniture with Paint – High End Design for Less

You’ve all heard the saying, “champagne taste on a beer budget”, wanting to create a designer look, but not having the money to make that a reality. That saying pretty much summed up my situation when we moved into our home several years ago. We had very little furniture and lots of empty space to fill. I had to get creative with my money in order to achieve the look I wanted for our home on a very small budget. I decided I would find some furniture that I could transform with paint to get the look I wanted, but couldn’t afford. I want to share with you how you too can  transform your furniture with paint, high end design for less!

Let’s start with a view of our home right after we moved in 9 years ago…

We were poor college graduates with mostly second hand furniture. Our top priority was finding new kitchen chairs! Ours were hand-me-downs and were falling apart. I began searching Craig’s List for chairs that had French inspired lines. After hunting for awhile, I found some French style dining chairs that were only $50 each. They were a light walnut color with an 80’s style plaid fabric on them. They had beautiful bones and were in our budget so we purchased them, knowing we would transform them into something that worked for our home.

Once we got them home, my husband spray painted them black and I had our upholsterer recover them in a brown, linen type fabric.

We got a call from our upholsterer, Dino from Piazza Upholstery {if you are in the Phoenix area, Dino is an amazing upholsterer give him a call and tell him Randi sent you}, asking us where we got the chairs. I told him they were from a lady on Craig’s List who’s mother was a designer in San Francisco. He sounded a little surprised when I told him how much we paid for them. Being from Italy, Dino had done a little research and found out that our $50 chairs were actually Italian antiques worth a small fortune.

My first thought was, “We just spray painted Italian antiques black!!!” Had I known they were antiques, I would have had them refinished or would have thought twice about whipping out the cans of spray paint. Needless to say, the chairs turned out beautifully and we loved and used them for years.

Over the years our family continued to grow and we no longer fit around our black, oval kitchen table my husband and I purchased when we were first married. We began another hunt for a new table. It took months for me to finally decide upon one that would fit all seven of us with room to spare. Suddenly our black chairs didn’t look so fabulous paired with our new gray table.

I tried moving our white dining room chairs around the table to see what the lighter color looked like with the new table. The result was so dramatically better! I was faced with a design dilemma. Do I buy new chairs? Paint my chairs? I stewed about it for longer than I care to admit.

The answer came when I stumbled upon a new paint called Pure and Original Paint {you can read more about P & O paint in my boy’s bedroom makeover post here}. Their paint is basically a luxury chalk paint that covers over paint or stain without having to sand or prime. Since our chairs were painted black, I thought for sure I would have to sand them down or pay someone to strip them.

I decided to give this paint a try. I selected a bright white called Silk White, and held my breath until it arrived. When the paint arrived I popped open the can.  The texture was thick and luxurious, like pudding. I started painting the black chairs white with just a regular angled paint brush.

The first coat covered the chairs better that I imagined it would. It still needed another coat to completely hide the random streaks of black, so I continued adding paint until I was happy with the look. I added 2-3 coats of paint on each chair before the black was completely covered. The best part was there was no sanding or priming, just painting!

The chairs looked a little blah to me, so I gave them a little character by sanded down a few spots. They still looked too flat to me, so I took some Annie Sloan clear wax and applied the wax to the whole chair with an old tee shirt.

Once it was dry to the touch, I mixed a little Annie Sloan dark wax with some of the clear wax and  rubbed a little on various spots on the chair. I took a clean rag and buffed the wax into the chair. If a spot got too dark, a small amount of the clear wax would lighten it right up. After the desired color was achieved, I took a clean rag and buffed the whole chair, giving it a slight sheen.

Here are the chairs before we painted them:

Counter Stools Before:

After:

I had the Dino, our upholsterer, take the canning off the backs of the counter stools and replace it with fabric. One of the reasons I chose to keep my chairs, is that I was allowed to choose a durable Sunbrella, linen- like fabric that will stand up to the spills and wear and tear of our large family. Store bought chairs often don’t have the highest quality fabric on them which effects their durability and longevity.

If you have, “champagne taste on a beer budget”, or just have a piece of furniture that needs to be transformed, try giving it a coat of paint. If you don’t want to have to prep and sand, you may consider Pure and Original Paint. I am so thrilled with the results and the quality of their paint. I’d love to hear what you think about the transformation!

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