Dining room visit 1

The next major piece of furniture in my dining room is a mahogany drop leaf table with ball in claw Queen Anne legs. It is a reproduction that my parents bought for me at an antique auction. I fell in love with it, and I think that my folks spent as much shipping it to me as they did to buy it. I have had it for 20 years and 4 different homes. I especially love the beading on the edge of the table.

I didn't have chairs for the dining room and the ones that I liked were very expensive. Plus, I knew that I couldn't match the table exactly. I had seen some examples of mixing dark wood and lighter chairs and I liked the way it looked. It was something that I thought would work well with what I planned for the paint job in the room.



I had seen some photos online with examples of the kind of chairs that I had in mind. The example on the bottom is from Decor magazine's Spring/Summer 2012 issue. Now I needed to find some chairs to work with to recreate the look. I began scouting thrift shops, and luckily I was able to find 4 matching chairs - 2 arm chairs and 2 side chairs that were in good condition. They were a bargain at $4.97 a piece.

A photo of the before and after priming of the arm chair is below. I used Kilz odorless aerosol spray primer.   

Then I painted them with 2 coats of Olympic's Spice Delight semi-gloss, a creamy vanilla color. This is the color of the wainscoating in the room. I used a gold glaze paint by Martha Stewart to accent nooks and crannies in the chairs including the faux canning. I also reupolstered the chairs.

Here are the chairs with the table.  

The room is progressing...stay tuned for more.