After painting my whole house white, I really needed to add some color ASAP. So I decided to do a colorful kitchen chair makeover.
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I bought these kitchen chairs at IKEA a few months ago and I thought I liked the raw wood. It’s not awful, but they weren’t sealed.
So over the past 6 months, all the spills and grease have really done a number on these chairs. I’ve been wanting some colorful chairs anyway so I thought I would just paint them.
But if you decide to buy these chairs and just like the raw wood, just polyurethane them a few times and you can keep the raw wood finish.
I tried to clean the chairs really well before I started, but I did not clean them well enough. In retrospect, I should have sanded the seats lightly and put a primer on at least the seats because a couple of the stains still show through. But I’m still really happy with how they turned out.
Colorful Kitchen Chair Makeover
First thing I did was head to Michaels and pick out the paint I wanted for my chairs. Each chair needed to be a different fun, bright color, but all the chairs needed to coordinate.
I chose 6 colors. The rug in my living room is the inspiration for a lot of my color choices. So I wanted to be able to look at the colors with the rug.
After getting home, I narrowed in down to one color for each of the 4 chairs and a color for the table. I chose a green, blue, orange, yellow, and pink.
Before painting, I cleaned the chairs as best as I could and then let them dry. Then, mixed up some of my DIY chalk paint.
This is my favorite recipe for chalk paint. 2 ounces of acrylic paint was enough for one coat on each chair. And any extra paint can be stored in the same bottle the paint came in.
I did one light coat on each chair and loved the way it looked. The wood grain was still visible through the paint and I thought it looked really good.
The only problem was that there were some stains coming through on the seat. I didn’t have any primer, so I just decided to do multiple coats on the seat and light coats anywhere else there was staining.
I ended up doing 5 light coats on the seats. For coats 3-5, I watered down the chalk paint a little to make it more of a wash than a paint. This seamed to cover nicely.
After letting the chairs dry for a day, I them polyurethane them. I was worried that the poly would be too shiny, but I actually love the way it changed the color and sheen of the chairs.
They look amazing and now I’m really excited to paint the table as well. It was such an easy and inexpensive way to update this space.
Do I have to use chalk paint?
No, I just hate sanding and so chalk paint is the paint that I normally use for any furniture.
When using chalk paint do I have to seal it?
Yes. Either using a polyurethane or a wax.
