Refurbishing Chairs for a Dining Room Makeover

We love to create things. From crafts with the kids to DIY items for our home (see Alice in Wonderland Table) or family members homes. And Little Mr is quite talented at bringing Little Miss’ ideas to life when it comes to building or refurbishing things! Little Mr. had made a table from reclaimed wood for my mom, the table she had in there didn’t fit correctly. The next goal was to find chairs that would work for this compact dining space.

The Chairs

We used an old church pew as a bench for one side and wanted chairs for the other side. The church pew worked like a bench and saved a lot of space. It was used on the side by a wall. For the opposite side, we found these chairs at a Habitat for Humanity Store. They were $25 each. This was MUCH cheaper than any of the new chairs (that we weren’t really crazy about) that we found in stores.

We didn’t realize it until afterward, but they are actually Ethan Allen dining room chairs. There was one with a split in it, so Mr. B took them completely apart and then put them back together with additional wood glue to make sure they were sturdy. We also cleaned and sanded them before painting them.

We decided to paint the chairs grey and white, which would match the colors in my mom’s dining room area.

Have you ever half painted something like a chair? It can get complicated especially when there is contrast such as white and a dark grey. We had to make sure that the part we didn’t want painted was fully covered. It was tricky, however it turned out well!

As you can see below, the contrast works well and it is a big difference from the word wooden chairs that we started off with.

Final Product…

This is the completed table with the chairs! It fits great in her compact dining room! It gives a farmhouse feel to it with the painted church pew on one side and the refurbished dining room chairs on the other.