Dining room set remodel

This summer when we moved into our new rental house we now had space for a dining room table.  We haven’t had that since we moved to Texas. We got rid of our old dining table and loaned my brother all of the chairs for his lonely dining table. If I must admit, I really was happy to get rid of our old table, since it came with our house, and the chairs just weren’t my style. They were very country and not very comfortable.  Now that we had a dining room area Matt and I put our heads together to try and decide what kind of table we wanted. I looked at tons of furniture shops, retail stores and thrift stores, but could not find what I was looking for. Let me rephrase that, I couldn’t find what I wanted in the price range I wanted. Matt is we are cheap people, and are always looking for a deal, so we scouted the pages of Craigslist. I must have searched for weeks, which felt like months. Since we are in a college town and it was almost summer, I knew a lot of students would be selling off their furniture and maybe we could get a good deal. Honestly, I even thought it would be fun to refinish some chairs and a table anyway.

We eventually found a student selling a table and three chairs that had potential. I wish I had saved the posting, it really was a hoot. The poor guy let me know that this was their beer pong table and since there were so many of them moving in together, they had too many beer pong tables and this one was no longer needed. Hence the three chairs, all the rest of them had gotten destroyed during their wild and crazy games.  Matt and I inspected the table and made sure it was still sturdy and that it had good bones. It was a 6 person table and came with a leaf, so make that 8 persons.

It took us a good two to three months to work on these chairs and table. It sat in our dining room for a good month, until we had time to pull it out and sand it down. It was just soo hot this summer, that finding motivation was hard. With temperatures in the 110’s, we only had about a good one to two hours of daylight and lower temperatures to work on the thing.  Once we got started though we got pretty motivated because the table was heavy and was not fun to move in and out of the house every night.

We sanded, primed, sanded, painted 3 coats (with black spray paint), sanded and then put 3 coats of poly on. Whew, lots of work. I eventually did the poly work in our guest bathroom with a fan on high, so I didn’t get high! 

I got my fabric from fabric.com, and it rocked.

 It came out just how I wanted. I got my inspiration from a blog JandJhome! Our chairs weren’t as ornate, but they had the rattan weaving.

(picture of J&J home's chairs)

A problem we had was that only two of the chairs were really salvageable, since on the third one, the weaving had a big hole. I guess that was another battle scar from its beer pong days.  So with a 6-8 person table, and only two chairs, we needed to get more chairs. Again, I searched thrift stores, retail stores, garage sales, online and finally got an email from Kirkland’s about a sale they were having on their parsons chairs. 2 parsons chairs for $99. Bingo. We decided to get four chairs total, so it was only going to be around $200 with tax, but then the cashier had a $25 off coupon, so he rang up the two sets separately and we got each set for around $80, equaling around $160 for all four. What a steal!!!!  

(the two chairs we were deciding between at Kirkland's)

Once we got these bad boys home and got them assembled, it was a glorifying moment for us. We finally pickled the beast (can anyone name that movie?) We were soo proud. This was our first big project together and we actually finished it! We even had the table ready just in time for our family to come and visit. It was nice to have somewhere we could all sit and eat and hang out instead of all of us eating off of our laps on the couch. Which I must admit we still do, bad habits are hard to break. 

chairs with the tags on them still! I was so excited I couldn't wait to take some pics. 

Our little dining area now complete with a table and chairs. For some reason I don't have the fourth chair in the pics, I guess Matt was still putting it together when I took these. I will have to get an updated image and post it. 

And now, for a before and after picture!!!

Linking with the DIY showoff party: