D.I.Y. Project | Mid-Century Modern Dilapidated to Fresh

You know when you can’t sleep at night so you start shopping on your phone? Well that’s how I ended up with this kitchen table and chairs. I couldn’t get the thought of furniture out of my head, so I began by going on the Offer Up app and looked up lamps, mirrors, couches, and then lastly kitchen tables. There it was, a very ugly and poorly painted, dark brown, mid-century modern table and chairs. Picture is worth a thousand words when it came to the one picture that only gave me a little to work with on how it would fit in my space. It was only $20 for the whole table and chair set, so I jumped on it! We pulled up to the townhome the next day to pick it up and when I walked into pay for it, I saw it in all its disgusting glory. Gladly, I knew this piece had good bones, but I had no idea what an undertaking this would really be. 

The sand paper got real nitty gritty….no pun intended; I had to strip the whole piece. I thought I could get away with just electric sanding, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. There were so many layers on this that it was like the rings inside of a tree when you cut it open. Funny part is that we put fingernail polish remover on it, thinking we wouldn’t have to buy stripper. Sadly, not the right thing to use on a kitchen table and five chairs. Carrying all the furniture outside to the yard was the first pain and then the painstaking hours of stripping the furniture. Sanding down everything after that was no walk in the park either. The part I really enjoyed was getting to upholster the chair cushions because it’s something as a D.I.Yer  that I’ve always wanted to do. I saved money on the cushions by paying $16 for a foam pad originally for a queen size mattress and then cutting it down for the chairs rather than paying the expensive price of $11 per chair cushion at the fabric store.

           My creative juices really flowed on this project. My kitchen has a lot of wood elements going on, so I wanted to break it up with something that matches the era. The beautiful original wood color with just a bit of white paint at the bottom of all the chairs and table; my mother’s colorful description of it reminding her of a cat with boots. Now after the finishing touches of drilling on the sets and polyurethane the wood, it is a picture perfect mid-century modern piece. I also added a Todd Pennington bench from ReStore on sale for only $10 and a gold geometric candle holder from an antique store in Mission, Kansas for $8. All in all, the table and chairs ended up being way more than expected after everything was said and done. This was a good learning experience and if done again, I believe I would do it cheaper. It started off at $20 kitchen table and chairs + $10 bench to almost $200, but the best part is that it’s a custom piece that I had a big part of where I wouldn’t have gotten out of a new one. More projects are definitely in my future and my kitchen is starting to really come together.

Anita