How I saved a thousand dollars and got a fabulous new look for my dining room...

About a year ago, I saw a chair in the window of my favorite home store, Five Green Boxes, that’s on the same block as the salon where I work.  They have amazing painted shabby-chic furniture, and I own a few of their originals, but they’re a little on the expensive side.

A few years ago I tried to replicate the Five Green Boxes shabby-chic look on a dresser and nightstand after reading a few tutorials on-line, and while they turned out “cute”, they look to me like I did them myself.

I’ve done a few projects since then, and my skills have vastly improved.  So, when I saw the pink chair in the window, I decided I was up for a new challenge.  I “inherited” a nice Ethan Allen dining set a few years ago, but the chairs were in need of covering and really, they needed some love, so I thought that this might be a fun project.

I found a fabric remnant that I loved for $8, bought a pink paint to match, and left it in my storage area for a year.

Then, my mom took a class on Annie Sloan chalk painting about a month ago.  She pretty much wants to paint anything not moving, so after she had completed a few projects at her house, she informed me that we were going to do my dining set.  She knows me so well.  This is exactly how I operate:  I won’t ever get anything done without a little motivation so the promise of help, company and a completed project is exactly what I needed.

Annie Sloan doesn’t make hot pink chalk paint, plus, I had already bought the right shade in regular old Behr flat paint, so I did a little Pinterest research and found that I could make it into “chalk paint” by adding plaster of Paris.  We decided that we might as well try it.

We painted and sanded them, then Mom waxed them while I changed the fabric on the seats.  It took us the whole day on Friday and the evening on Saturday, but we got lots of good visiting in (don’t get me wrong, by the end of the evening on Saturday, we were over it) and got completely done. 

When I look at them, they look expensive, not like I did them myself (or asked my mom to do them for me).

The chairs that I saw cost around $200 per chair.  We figure we had spent about $50 in materials.  So, we saved me $1150, and I have a fabulous dining set!

I only painted the chairs, not the table, and, I’m embarrassed to admit the reason why:  I figure if I get married again, no man is going to let me have a hot pink dining set (mostly because Sawan never would have allowed that).  I had thought that I would only be a day and a half into painting the chairs a different color if I needed to change them, and that doing the table would make it too difficult, I’d be too invested, so I needed to keep it simple.  Here’s the thing:  I don’t have a prospect on the horizon, so I’m going to paint the table the way I want it, and enjoy my pink table.  Plus, as my friend Sondra said, as soon as I paint my table pink, Mr.Right is going to come along.  It’s a win-win.

Before.

Line up, Men!

After.

At my not-for-long brown table.