The Love of Vintage Metal Porch & Patio Furniture!

The Shabby Chicas were busy today stocking, arranging and re-arranging our booths today at Homestead Handcrafts on Thousand Oaks (San Antonio, Texas). We arrived at 11:00 a.m. or so and did not plan this but wound up working until closing which was at 5:00 p.m.! Whew!

Our top salesperson (a.k.a. 86 year-old mom) scored these two very cool vintage porch chairs. Well, we moved this and that to fit them in along with two other pieces of furniture and a lot of smalls.

We just love the original color on these and they are in such great condition too! Priced at only $48 each, they are sure to go quick.

Vintage metal porch and patio furniture is so cool, built well and can often be used inside too. We love to surf the 'net to see what others are doing with their vintage pieces. We recently ran across Lady Butterbugs' blog about a super cool vintage glider she painted! That's right, she chalk painted it! Sweet.

Click on the link here to read more about Lady Butterbug's inspiring process. We have a vintage bench very similar to this in our inventory and have been contemplating painting it too with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. Not sure what the original color of our piece is but it was painted a dark red. To paint or not to paint? What would you do?

Country Grey Oak Table Transformation

I have read where Annie Sloan Chalk Paint is known as a "girl's paint." I can attest that it truly is the "working girl's paint." Maintaining a full-time job whether it's in the office or in your "home" office, finding the time to do your picking and tending to your family is not always easy. Albeit I have several four-legged children (not the two-legged fussy kind) it's sometimes more than this Shabby Chica can manage. That's when I turn to Annie Sloan Chalk Paint to lose myself in the wonderful world of color. With the wand of my paintbrush, I can turn an ugly duckling into the belle of the ball in as quick as 1 day!  And the best part is...wait for it...I can do it inside the house when the husband is out of town for a couple of days and he will never know!  (Uh oh, hope he doesn't read this blog. Oh, well. I'll worry about that tomorrow.)

Here's a picture of  a cute little oak table I picked about a month ago for $20. I love the legs on this.

I had wanted to try Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Country Grey and thought this piece would be perfect for it. I started this project Friday evening about 7:00 p.m. I painted one coat on and in about one hour it was very dry and I put the second coat on. I had started another project during the hour--pics of that project will be coming soon. The chalk paint is not messy to use and if you do have an oops, it is super easy to clean up. 

 I took this picture at about 9:30 p.m. on Friday. The second coat was still drying and the color is actually a darker than what appears to be in this picture. Country grey seems like a light khaki to me. I had to work on Saturday during the day so I put the first coat of Annie Sloan Clear Wax on when I got home which was about 6:30 p.m. After about an hour I buffed the wax and then did a light distressing with sandpaper. I used a moist paper towel to absorb the small amount of dust from the sanding I was doing inside house! This worked very well. I then reapplied Clear Wax on the top of the table and the distressed areas. I have found that using white sheets to buff works very well for me. Other cloths used such as old t-shirts, rags and even a buffing pad on my sander did not work out so well. It seemed that I would always see little particles on the finished product. So far, the sheets are particle free and leave a nice smooth finish.

I was able to get the table to the shop first thing Sunday morning. I would estimate the total time on this project to be about 5 hours! It used to take me two weekends to finish a project. One weekend to sand, prime and prep and the second to paint and wax. With Annie Sloan Chalk Paint I have been able to cut that time down drastically. What will your next (or first) Annie Sloan project be?

--The Shabby Chicas

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