Bar Height to Standard Issue Chairs

Ever since we bought a slew of doors this past summer, I’ve been dreaming of creating a new dining set a la Julia Crawford. The door-to-table part was easy (and I’ll of course share that with you), but deciding on the chairs was a much harder task. Pinterest had tons of ideas and I even flirted with those clear ghost chairs, but at over $100 a chair and some complaints that the acrylic scratched and clouded easily, I was back at square one.

Then I came up with an inspired idea. And by inspired, I mean super cheap and man-I-hope-this-works-because-I-don’t-want-a-bunch-of-broken-chairs. I think by now you’ve guessed that I wanted to cut down the current bar height chairs to fit with a standard height table. That meant 5 inches off the legs, each of which had a bit of curve to them. Thank god for the miter saw and new electric sander, that’s all I can say.

We have two cut right now and, although one leg is slightly shorter than the other three on both – weird – they were better than I’d even imagined. For the wobbly bits, (ahem, that’s what she said) I just used a felt chair pad and stuck it to the offending leg.

Perfection! Well…almost. The next decision was what to paint the chairs. I already knew I’d be going with spray paint because I like the coverage and with so much black laquer, I knew Krylon for Plastic would work beautifully.

Anyway, back to the color issue. My original thought was white, but even though I’ve begrudgingly added shabby chic elements into my repertoire, I wasn’t quite ready for that. Not to mention, the new seats are cream-colored and white would have clashed. I briefly considered a bright blue, but Scott quickly put the kibosh on that. Black just didn’t seem right, either…but I did finally make a decision and then came home to prep.

First, I sanded down the one chair I ended up painting (I got tired…and I was busy…and *whine* I just got one done, okay?), with the new power sander.

Ta da! This might be my favorite tool of all. It was so good at removing finish that I probably could have used it to round out all the corners if I wanted.

Seriously, look beyond the blurriness of that picture and tell me that chair isn’t prepped for paint?

Now, technically, Krylon for Plastic doesn’t require sanding, but on wood that we’d be using on a daily basis, I didn’t want to take any chances. As it was, I don’t always have the best spraying technique and there are some odd drips here and there. Imagine if the paint just started peeling off? Disaster.

So what color did I choose? You wonder.

I had seen all these delicious metal chairs going for upwards of $125 on the cheap end. Pretty! But hey, anyone can buy a can of brushed nickel paint and create a faux version of that beauty, right? Right?

You better believe it!

Look how close I even got to replicating the brushed nickel on the new dining room legs:

And, of course, the before and after

Swoon. Now here’s my dilemma (although it might be easier to answer when you see the full set up later this week): The black and silver don’t look half bad sitting next to each other. What if I was to paint only two chairs silver and leave the others black, jumping on that crazy bandwagon of mismatched chairs? My theory is that the unifying fabric and design make up for the difference in color. What do you think?

Check me out linking up at the One Step Closer party!