The Little French Farmhouse: high chair makeover

Monday, August 9, 2010

From Barn Sale to the Table in 3 Years

Hmmm...can you guess what it is?

What did I buy 3 years ago at a barn sale that I just finished up and can now pull up to the table?

Give up?

YES!! A high chair.

I bought this at a barn sale when our 3 year old was a baby. It was nasty old wood and I knew it would be just perfect all painted and pretty. But, as life goes along at it's fast little pace, stuff comes up, you get busy and projects don't always get finished as planned. We ended up using one of those plastic thingy's that attaches to a chair and this lovely chair was relegated to the garage.

We even almost got rid of it about 2 years ago. I'm so glad we didn't though. Anyway, I had almost forgotten about it but then found it again. I decided right then and there that it must be finished. No more putting it off. I AM going to use this chair.

So I pulled out the paint and brushes and got to work. First I painted the whole chair in a nice, creamy shade of white. Rustoleum brand in Ivory Satin to be exact. When it dried, I dry brushed a black glaze over the whole thing, working in small areas at a time. Immediately after brushing it on, I wiped the glaze off with a clean paper towel.

This filled in all of the detailed areas nicely.

I just mixed a little of this black paint with water and made my own glaze - nothing fancy!

After all of that dried, I went over it again with a blue/gray shade of glaze. Worked it into all of the cracks and crevices, wiped it all off and then let that dry.

For the second coat of glaze, I used this color above. It was left over from our living room that I just finished painting. It's called Comfort Gray by Sherwin Williams. Can I just tell you how much I LOVE this color?!! It is the most perfect shade of blue/gray I have ever seen. EVAHH!!
I had it mixed at Lowes.

So anyway, after all of the coats of paint dried, I decided to get fancy. You know I can't get enough of grain sacks, old numbers, pretty lettering anything and everything classic and French. I'm obsessed with numbers lately. Obsessed. So I decided that I must have a number printed on the tray of the high chair. But you know me, I want results quickly. I didn't want to waste time trying to figure out how to make my own stencil and my printer is broken so I couldn't print fancy numbers to trace. Long story short, my son said, "why don't you just write it on there." Okay, sounds simple enough, right? Why not? What's the worst that can happen? I mess it up and paint over it. So free hand it is. I found my super thin brush and the bottle of black paint and did my best. I painted a number on the tray. But not just any number...

No. 225

Yes, 225 - that's Abigail's birthday - Feb 25 ~~ 2-25

did I mention I'm loving numbers?

Now, I'm definitely not an artist and the numbers are a bit crooked but if they were all even and perfectly spaced, it wouldn't look old and authentic now would it?

Besides, this is the one I aim to please...