Well hello there and happy Friday! This week was a bit of a struggle over here, but we made it through and are ready to enjoy the weekend. I hope you were able to catch last week’s long awaited post on our “new” dining table, but if not you can catch it here–Dining Table Makeover. As promised, I am back this week to share all the details on the chairs.
When I first found the table, I knew that I wanted some new chairs to go with it. After a quick search online, I quickly realized that going secondhand was going to be the way to go since chairs can be so dang pricey! I started the search on Facebook Marketplace, and it wasn’t long before I stumbled upon these beauties.
I was so excited when I read that they were from the 1940s and were originally from a green bean farm in North Carolina–how cool is that? I immediately saw their potential to be the perfect chairs to go with the table, so I bought them for $10 each and brought them home.
Supplies Used:(Affiliate links may be provided for convenience. For more info, see my full disclosure here.)
The first step was getting rid of the green stain. I was told that they were stained green back in the 70s (which makes total sense at that time haha!) so the stain was pretty stubborn to remove. Anthony jumped in to help and between the two of us we were able to get all 4 sanded down fairly quickly. We took turns using the electric sander for the larger areas while the other worked on the more detailed spots by hand.
The next day it was time to stain! I started by applying a coat of whitewash like I normally do when I want a lighter color to prevent the stain from going on too dark.
When it came time to decide on a stain I was stumped. I knew that I wanted them to remain pretty light but wanted to brown them up slightly. I ultimately decided that instead of using stain I wanted to try using Dark Wax. I have used dark wax many times in the past over paint to create a faux wood grain look, however I wanted to see what it looked like on bare wood. I was obsessed!
I used the same rag that I used to wipe the whitewash away so it was pretty wet, and I found out that using wet rag not only makes it easier to apply the wax, but it also makes it go on kind of washed out which I ended up loving! I had to wet the rag every 10 min or so since it dried quickly.
The wood grain is very deep on these so some spots still had a little bit of the green stain. I purchased some White Wax and went over each chair to disguise it a bit. It worked pretty well, although in the end I don’t even really notice the green anymore. I finished them with a coat of Ultra Flat Polyacrylic to protect them and this is how they turned out!
As you probably noticed, I switched out the fabric to my tried-and-true drop cloth to make them more neutral. I failed to grab pics, but I used the same process that I did for the other set that I sold which can be found here–Dining Set Makeover.
The four chairs fit perfectly on either side of the table, and I added these two x-back chairs with these cushions for the ends.
My boys are typical boys and pretty messy eaters, so they get stains on them all the time. However, I find that rubbing them down with a magic eraser every now and then cleans them right up!
I love how they turned out and the fact that they have such a cool story behind them is just icing on the cake.
I see us enjoying our green bean chairs for many years to come and even if we decide to replace them one day I want to try to hang on to them as our own little family heirlooms.
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Linking up to these awesome parties!
(Affiliate links may be provided for convenience. For more info, see my full disclosure here.)
They turned out great!