The Great Chair Restoration of 2016

Seems to be an annual tradition in this home for me to start a seemingly small and easy project and have it turn into some bigger and more difficult then Ben Hur.

It started off with the Great Skirting Board Project of 2014 followed up by the Great Fence Painting Saga of 2015.  This definitely had the markings of this year's "project to go wrong".

These are the bar stools in the kitchen that I bought secondhand from my work when they were moving offices. They were originally from Ikea and I think I paid $5 or less for each of them. They're the perfect height, look subtle yet classic and tuck neatly under the bench. 

I absolutely love them, but the metal on the legs is looking really shabby. I'm not even sure whether they were grey or black to start with, but they've been worn down and now have this multi colour look that just makes them look dirty. They were a bit shabby to start with, but after a couple of years they look really bad.

I would happily have bought new ones from Ikea as I think they were only about $20 to start with, but they don't make them anymore so I thought it would be easy to just re-spray the legs.

There was a little more to pulling them apart than I initially thought. And I stupidly pulled ALL of them apart at once and we wouldn't have anything to sit on at the breakfast bar for as long as this was going to take. (Note to self, dumb idea.)

Pulling them apart did make me realise how absolutely filthy they were. I gave them a really good scrub with a scourer and gumption and they came up like new!

I originally thought it would just be a matter of spraying them, but Jansen insisted that if I wanted to do it correctly, I needed to lightly sand them back, spray with a primer then spray with paint. The sanding took the longest as there were 20 legs plus the foot frame at the bottom. All the pieces were sprawled out in the downstairs lounge for 3 weeks and I sometimes only got one or two legs sanded per night. So annoying that downstairs was a mess AND we didn't have chairs to sit on when we had friends over.

I did eventually get them sanded and I strung them up under the house to spray them.

Bella the ever loyal wonder dog just sat next to me, often downwind of the spray. She had a couple of new silver streaks by the end.

Ta-dah!!! I used White Knight Chrome Spray, which i would have liked to have had a bit more of a mirror finish, but the light grey still looks great and 1000% better than before.

They all look so much cleaner now. All up the materials were about $40 and 3 weekends worth of time. Much longer than I'd anticipated as I thought it would only be a weekend project, but well worth the extra effort.