The kitchen table was never part of this job. Solid pine, well used, and staying exactly as it was. The chairs were the problem. Because they were newer than everything else in the room, and in a lovely old cottage in rural Surrey, new is the one thing you notice. So the brief was simple enough. Paint the chairs white, in a shabby chic, old-fashioned style, so they'd look as if they had always sat around that table. Nobody expected them to match the pine. These shabby-chic white chairs just needed to look as though they belonged.
Shabby Chic White Chairs now Feel Part of the Scene
The chairs themselves weren't very old at all. Sound joints, no wobble, nothing to repair. The kind of chairs that work perfectly well and simply look wrong. That's the usual starting point for a shabby chic job, and it's exactly the point of the process. We take something that looks new and give it a few decades in a fortnight.
Here's what we did.
Step 1: Sanding
Every surface, every slat and rail, keyed with 120 grit and then 240 grit paper to take the sheen off the factory finish and give the paint something to hold on to. Then a wipe down with a tack cloth, because dust in a white eggshell shows.
Step 2: painting
Two coats of Dulux Wimborne White eggshell, brushed rather than sprayed, with a full day's drying between coats. Wimborne White is a soft, warm white rather than a bright modern one, so it sits comfortably next to old pine.
Step 3: Sanding Again
This is the shabby chic bit. Once the second coat had hardened, we went back over the chairs with 80 grit paper on the edges, the back rails, the seat fronts and the tops of the legs. Anywhere that hands and years would naturally wear a painted chair. Eighty grit is coarse, and that's the point. It's tough enough to get through two coats of eggshell where you want it to, without fussing about. The aim is to reveal a little of what's underneath, not to strip it off
Step 4: Waxing
A coat of Annie Sloan clear soft wax over every chair, worked in with a brush and buffed off with a cloth. The wax seals the paint, softens the white a touch further and gives the finish the low sheen that old painted furniture has and new painted furniture doesn't.
Shabby-Chic Chairs Are Nearly Ready
Freshly-painted, the chairs are waiting for the shabby chic treatment with sandpaper and Annie Sloan wax.
Shabby-chic White Painted Chairs Waiting for the Distressing Stage
Then back to the cottage, under the beams, and back around the pine table. The chairs didn't match it. They weren't supposed to. But with a blanket thrown over each back and the morning light coming through that small window, nobody looked at them, which was the whole idea.
It took two coats of Wimborne White, a sheet of sandpaper and a tin of wax to get there. Give us a call on 07351 101851 if you've got chairs that look too new for the room they're in. Because we can shabby chic your furniture.
Let's Get In Touch
Contact Details
When it takes sanding, painting, varnishing or waxing to get there, give us a call if you've got furniture that needs a transformation.
Phone Number
07351 101851
Email Address
furniture@shabby-chic-surrey.com