Before & After | Dining Set Furniture Makeover

I hope you all had a chance to read in my last post about all the prep work this Duncan Phyfe style dining table needed.

A makeover was in order and chose to do a makeover with chalk paint.

It was a giant project–dining sets usually are! This is my 4th set to makeover, so you would think that I would have learned my lesson by now.

But it’s like any other painful experience . . . after a while you forget how bad it was and then decide to do it just one more time 🙂

Remember how it started? All dark, shellacked wood with lots of scratches and dents:

Well, here it is after all the wood-fixing work, painting, and chair recovering:

It may look white in this picture, but the paint color is actually a very light blue (it’s Sugar Cane by Maison Blanche chalk paint). You all know how I hate to paint things plain white, but I didn’t want to do anything to bold to this table.

It seemed to call out for something really elegant, so the light, subtle blue was the perfect fit.

The color plays off the stained top (which is Minwax Dark Walnut) really well.

Speaking of the stained top, isn’t it beautiful! I’m so glad I was able to salvage those damaged spots (read about how here) and save that gorgeous wood inlay. It would have been a shame to cover it up.

I think my favorite part of the set though is the fabric. It took me quite awhile to find what I was looking for–something that would be elegant yet modern, and that would highlight the blue tone in the paint while also contrasting to it.

When I finally found this pattern by HGTV at Joanne’s, I knew immediately it was the winner, kind of like an “A-Ha!” moment.

The roll only had 2 yards left on it, and the lady at the cutting counter tried to convince me that wasn’t going to be enough to recover 6 chair seats. I just smiled, told her to package it up anyway–she didn’t know she was dealing with a “professional “–haha!

And yes, it ended up being plenty of fabric to do the job.

I like how you can see the evolution of decorative styles so easily in the underside of a dining chair seat.

The fabric is a linen blend, and it just looks stunning with the chair color and stained top. While I was setting up the set in my booth on Friday, several people stopped to comment specifically on how great the fabric was, so I think my gut instincts worked 🙂

I enjoyed having this set out on my porch for awhile with some of my pretty flowers. My husband remarked how much more elegant it made our porch look!

I can see it fitting perfectly into someone’s light and airy dining room, maybe that has large french doors opening up to their back garden.

It’s a totally different style than the last Duncan Phyfe set I worked on, but that’s one of the things I find fun about this business.