This "tale as old as time" could be said to be true in my house. My husband likes to jokingly refer to us a Furniture Rescue. Give us your tired, your broken, your chipped up, stained, burned, gouged, and dusty/dirty furniture and we will shelter it, repair it, clean it, beautify it, and find it a new loving family. (I think he likes that last part the best.) We found The Beast in great need of all of the above. As a matter of fact, when my husband picked it up I was frankly quite shocked that he had loaded up this puppy to bring home instead of turning it down! The Beast was a large table, 7 chairs, 2 leaves, and 1 broken chair. It came from a house of 6 children. Children who evidently were allowed to use markers on the table and cushions, use glitter glues on or off the paper, paint their nails, and perhaps try to clean up a spill with remover that the poly coating really didn't like! There was dried up cereal stuck to the legs of the table and chairs. It looked as though no attempt had ever been made to clean up any type of mishap. But enough of that, because it had pretty features and was a solid piece it was worth the work we put into it! It took quite a while to complete so that's why I've been pretty quiet on the blog lately.
The chairs lined up in the march to the photo shoot. Can you just hear..."Be our guest, be our guest..."?
And The Beast turned into The Beauty!
The broken chair was not repairable and gets added to our parts to pillage pile, so we went with the 7 chairs. The table is large, 43x68 without any leaves in it. One of the 2 leaves was sacrificed so that we could repair some of the broken beading around the table and remaining leaf. I also tried several strippers on it in the hopes of being able to salvage the wooden top on the table. This is not a vintage or antique set and I don't know what kind of protective finish was applied but that stuff was like kryptonite. Holy smokes, no amount of chemicals or sanding was going to give you a stainable top. So, I painted it to hide the hideous mishaps.
Some gratuitus pretty leg shots for ya! The carving details and turned legs were so nice on this piece it's why I sent the Mr. after it. Look at the chair backs...
I chose to use Annie Sloan's Old White paint on all of the pieces. They are distressed and waxed with a clear wax except for the table top which has several coats of poly to keep it looking pretty for a long time.
All the seats were recovered in a pretty "duck egg" blue fabric with ivory, mocha, and darker blue flowers and leaves running through it. It is 43x83 with the remaining leaf in it. I'm very pleased over all with how this group turned out. I truly hope it ends up in a nice home where someone will appreciate it's beauty. Sorry about the photos and
poor lack of staging. We were running out of light and I wanted to get this ready for a post and move on to more projects! I am surprisingly not as patient as I thought I was. Huh.
Wouldn't it be pretty though all set up for a lovely outdoor dinner party? Hopefully next time...
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Have a wonderful week!
Deb
