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Here is a fuzzy picture of the top of what the original chairs look like.
Now that I knew that I would only be getting 3 chairs from mom, I started looking around for more to add to the set. Since the chairs are antiques, many that I found online were quite expensive and a lot of them were in England. So, I decided to look locally for similar chairs but not antique ones.
I found one chair at a local thrift shop and bought it for $11.
After finding that chair, I found a dining set on Facebook Marketplace for $100. I didn’t need the table and all the chairs so I asked if they would be willing to sell just the two captain chairs and one regular one. They responded that I could have all 6 chairs for $50 if I was interested. Yes! At such a great price, I decided to take them all. I’m not sure what I’ll do with a total of 11 chairs (once the ones from mom arrive) but I figure I can always donate a few. Below are pictures of the chairs. As you can see, they don’t exactly match the original design but they are pretty close!
Now that I had chairs – lots of chairs – I had a decision to make; should I strip the ones I was going to use and see what the wood looks like or should I paint them? In the picture of the original chair (sorry that it’s so blurry – it’s a picture of a photograph), you can see that it is painted red. Mom painted the set back in the ’70s when the technique called ‘antiquing’ came out. When we refinished the table & buffet the first time, we had them professionally stripped because underneath that paint was a black stain that we could not remove on our own. Knowing that the chairs coming from moms will have the same stain, I decided to paint a few of the newer chairs now and the original ones when they arrive.
The first step was to remove the chair cushion. Removing chair cushions is easy. There are 4 screws that hold the wood bottom of the cushion to the chair. I removed the screws and set the cushion aside.
Once the cushion had been removed, using a sanding block, I roughed up the shiny finish on the chair then wiped it down with a soft cloth followed by a tack cloth. I did this process for the 3 chairs that I started with.
For the 4th & 5th chairs, I thought I’d try using oven cleaner to remove the finish. I’ve been reading about using oven cleaner as a stripper and because this is the first project since hearing about it, I decided to give it a go! I liked the ease of being able to spray the stripper as opposed to brushing on CitriStrip.
I took the chairs outside in the fresh air while I used the oven cleaner. I also wore long cleaning gloves, a mask, and goggles.
I sprayed the oven cleaner onto the wood at the back of the chair and allowed it to sit for about 20 minutes.
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