Susanna Week: painted chairs

My sister Susanna has been visiting for the last week to help us out with some projects. Mike and I have been so focused on our kitchen remodel that it's been hard to redirect our attention to other projects. Of which there are many to do! Susanna graciously offered to come visit and tackle some for us. One of those was to paint the metal chairs that I bought last year at an antique store.

The chairs were generally in great shape, but the previous owner had painted them with matte latex paint, using a brush no less. So the paint was streaked and chipped, and while the color was fun, it was a little "off" in comparison to our house color.

 So Susanna spent several hours sanding down the existing paint.

 

And then priming the chairs

And finally spray painting them Ivy Green! 

She also did the little red metal table in the middle (another vintage store treasure).

A little note about spray paint:

We used Valspar spray paint because that is what Fred Meyer carries, our closest source for such things. We did have one can of Rustoleum primer leftover from another project - can you spot the difference in the photo of the primed chairs? The more opaque chair on the left used the Rustoleum primer. The Valspar primer had horrible coverage, which should have clued us into how the painting was going to go. Each chair used three (!) cans of paint. I painted my purple chair last summer with Rustoleum paint and it didn't even use a whole can. As a result, I wholeheartedly recommend the Rustoleum over the Valspar any day.