Friday Archives: have a seat

Just about a year ago I was preparing for my wedding, doing all the typical last minute things like finding jewelry to go with my dress, sewing table linens and refinishing my patio furniture. Yes, I decided the week before my wedding was the perfect time to have the patio furniture that I'd purchased three years before stripped and repainted. Isn't this on the list of every bride?


I scored this vintage metal table and two chairs on a 2004 trip to Brimfield with Tory. It was the last day of the show and we were hoping to get some good deals from vendors who didn't want to haul their unsold wares home. We had seen at least a dozen sets before we found this one. After some negotiation the dealer let me take it home for $75. I scraped it as best I could by hand (it was pretty rusty and had a bad paint job) and sprayed it white. My handiwork held up for a couple of years, but by last May it was looking pretty sad, with lots of rust flaking through the paint.



By the time I'd decided it had to be refinished before our guests descended upon us there was no time (or desire) to refinish it again myself. After some serious detective work I found a local paint shop that agreed to work on it. They heat-stripped and sand-blasted off the old paint rust and then powder coated it a matte black for $150. I recovered the seats with oilcloth and we had ourselves a new vintage patio set.

I'm so glad I spent the money to have it professionally refinished. They did a far better job than I could ever have done by hand and for relatively small money. Now I just need to find a couple more chairs...

Sand it or strip it, that is the question

My dad found this chair in an old office building that was being renovated in the early 1970s. It was always either at the head of the table or in front of the telephone/office nook in his house. We have a lot of family pictures with my dad sitting in this chair. It is solid and stood up to four kids dragging it around and turning it upside down to build forts in the living room. When my dad died my brothers were incredibly gracious and let me take it and I am forever grateful to them.
It clearly needs to be refinished, but I'm not sure the best way to approach it. I've refinished (using that product that you just brush on over the original finish) and painted other wood furniture in the past but they were all garage sale finds and it really didn't matter how they turned out. This chair means a lot to me and I don't want to destroy it. I'm pretty sure it's oak and you can see that the original finish is quite brittle and completely worn off in some areas.

Should I sand off the finish or use a chemical stripper? How do I refresh the bare wood that has darkened? Advice welcomed, especially from you Ubercrafty folks out there.