DIY painted furniture for a fall porch refresh! 👏
You all know that I love a good painted furniture re-do. Just recently I refinished my grandmother’s heirloom head and foot board after removing layers of mint green paint to reveal their natural beauty. Before that, I showed you how to use chalk paint to revolutionize an antique vanity for my girls’ bedroom. Today I’m going to take you through a DIY furniture makeover in a completely different setting and in perfect timing for fall gatherings.
There aren’t many sites out there that show you the benefits of color matching your porch furniture with the exterior of your home. Perhaps I represent a small minority of people, but I often wonder why we don’t put as much thought into the color of our outdoor furniture as we do with our indoor furniture? I find even less information about transforming antique wooden chairs or tables into beautiful weather resistant pieces. Are you with me friends? So here at Cleverly Simple, I am tackling a simple front porch furniture makeover for our 1929 brick bungalow using dining table chairs and color matching them to our front entry door. Our last outdoor re-do of the year!
Come on out to my front porch!
First, the old…. We received these plastic Adirondack chairs nearly five years ago as a housewarming gift. We’ve sat and watched the kids play at the park in front of our house, offered them to friends during visits and catered our outdoor rug around their pretty green color.
This summer, we refinished our porch floor from a chipped paint mess to a stained bare wood beauty. We also painted our original front storm door a deep blue to bring out the darker brickwork in our home.
It soon become apparent that these green chairs didn’t look quite right with the fresh changes. We had been wanting to replace the chairs for something more solid anyhow, but now the inspiration to match them with the same deep blue was kicked into gear.
I found these 100 year old beauties at an antique store for only $40. The price was low because one of them had no legs 😉 Oh, but the potential for legs was there, right?? My husband had a carpenter friend who was able to turn the legs on a lathe to match. Sometimes the best furniture deals come with a broken or missing limb. If your local carpenter will fix it for a small fee, it might be worth the investment!
Before we transform these dining chairs into outdoor pieces, a little prep work is needed. Because we are not staining the wood, a simple sanding and dusting will do. The sanding will remove any imperfections from the previous finish and the dusting will keep the dust from finding a home on our paint brush.
The color we used to paint our front storm door is a deep gray blue called “Gotham Gray” made by Valspar. When making your selection, always choose a quality exterior grade paint that is made to hold up against the elements of weather (even if you have a covered porch like we do!) Pictured here is Valspar’s Duramax in satin finish. Because the paint includes primer as well, we only need two coats of paint on each chair with a light sanding and dusting in between.
The original chair had very little padding on it for comfort. Since we were going through the effort to fix and paint, we also took the time to create chair cushions. The tutorial we used was by Eat, Knit & DIY because we wanted to attach the cushion in a way that would allow us to change its fabric easily in the future. Using her steps, we constructed a new seat on top of the old seat – genius!
I scored this zippy fabric on Ebay, which is a fantastic place to look for fabric when you only need a small amount. I wasn’t sure if the blue jigsaw would work with Gotham Gray, but since I paid so little for the remnant, it was worth going for. Be sure to look for terms like outdoor fabric, canvas, waterproof or sunbrella during your search. Regular ol’ cotton fabric will fall apart or fade in the outdoors.
Our antique dining chairs turned porch furniture are finished! What do you think? I love how they are much more sturdy and fit the character of our home. The beauty of a furniture makeover like this is that it’s unlikely someone will have the exact same chair, paint color and fabric as you!
Perhaps my favorite part of this furniture makeover is how the chairs color match to the front storm door. The one end of our porch now coordinates with the other. I’ll probably add some orange pillows or more blue and green decor to pull it together even more, but the hard work is done.
A simple outdoor painted furniture makeover waiting for our family to enjoy the ever changing happenings of fall 🙂
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