French Country Glazed Creamy Painted Dining Set : Mini Tutorial

• Materials: 
• Sherwin Williams Creamy Semi-gloss arylic paint
• Minwax dark walnut stain
• Minwax Polyurethane Rub on varnish
• A mini sander, paint brushes, and paper towels

I had a great French table in my garage but it had some deep scratches on it from being moved around carelessly. It had some lovely matching chairs but over the years most had broken and I only had a few left so I was thrilled to find a set of six similar style French country style chairs at a local thrift shop. When I looked on the bottom I found they were from the catalog Ballard Designs and they were originally really expensive! Love that. I also love the antique white look and the finish on the chairs and table didn't match so it was a perfect opportunity for a furniture refashion.

This was a long project in the making and I have to credit this tutorial from Miss Mustard Seed for her really good directions on stripping and redoing my table and chairs. Although I have done lots of refinishing this was a new technique and I wanted to try something from her blog since I love her style. It took me awhile to do this project, as I would work outside for about an hour at a time. I started in early July and was happy to have it finished by the end of summer !

To sum up Miss Mustard Seed's  tutorial here is what I did:

• I sanded the varnish off the tabletop completely. If you are going to restain you need to remove everything.
• I roughly sanded the varnish off the parts I was going to paint. I have to thank my son Oliver who helped with this. It took some real elbow grease. My mom told me later that I didn't have to sand the parts I wanted to paint but that I could have primed them instead. Thanks mom!
• I painted the chairs and table legs with 3 coats of Sherwin Williams Creamy.
• I then sanded the white painted parts to distress them a bit.
• After sanding, I dipped a paper towel in the dark walnut stain and rubbed lightly onto the furniture. I immediately took a clean paper towel and wiped as much of the stain off as I could. This gave the distressing a more natural and aged look.
• For the tabletop I rubbed on 3 coats of the Minwax dark walnut stain and after that dried, I rubbed on 5 coats of the Polyurethane varnish.

I love how it turned out!








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