It's all over the internet, in magazines and more and more in peoples homes. This beautiful combination of refinishing wood tops and painting the bottoms. This is personally my favorite look, because you get the satisfaction of stained wood and all the wonderful choices of color in paint!
Miss Mustard Seed herself has used this time and time again and always does a gorgeous job of mixing the two. I do believe I read somewhere it was her who started this fabulous trend. For me, it all started with my dining room table and chairs. This past summer, we were getting ready to move back to our home state of Illinois. Not only was I house hunting for home in Illinois from California, yeah I know crazy, but I was also hunting for a new/old dining room set to refinish and refurbish for when we did move. Let me back up a bit more. While living out west, I had visited a new shop near us that refurbished furniture called
Knot too shabby in Glendora California. And yes, I know that shop name is similar to my shop Knott So Shabby. I won't deny it. Since the day I saw that name on the sign in the window, I loved the sound of it. It sums it up, little shabby but very chic, I think! Now, when we were trying to come up with a shop name, all I could think of is where it all started for me and how I fell in love with the idea of refurbishing furniture from the get go. Michelle is the owner of that shop and I owe it to her for introducing me to the style of shabby chic. In fact, it's also where I learned all about
Annie Sloan Paints and Waxes. So yes, I admit her shop name was an inspiration for mine and I'm proud of it:) But to be honest, it was my teenage daughter who actually nominated Knott "So" Shabby, and we love it.
 |
The table that inspired me to refurbish mine,
from Knot too shabby in Glendora, California |
 |
This is Miss Mustard Seed's work with Refinished Top
and Painted Bottom, LOVE it! |
Ok, now back to the topic! We had a solid oak table with 8 chairs that we had bought in 2000. This set was the standard country style table on two pillars with matching chairs. The chairs one by one broke from one of the kids tipping it over one to many times. I think of the 8 original chairs, we only had 5 left. I finally talked my husband into trying sell the chairs on craigslist and buy 8 new/used one to refurbish.
 |
Our simple oak chairs. Nobody wanted them on Craigslist or my garage sales,
so I eventually refurbished them, will post about that one soon:) |
What I wanted to do was something that I had seen at Michelle's shop. She had refinished a table top and painted the bottom and chairs to match. I certainly couldn't afford her set so I decided to paint the lower half of our table and 8 new/used chairs and refinish the top of our oak table. My husband wasn't on board at first until I took him to the shop and showed him what I meant. He agreed it look nice and gave me the go ahead. At this point my experience with stripper was pretty limited, so my wonderful husband as handy as he is, sanded and sanded and sanded some more on that oak top until it was as smooth as a baby's bottom. After a few coats of the dark walnut stain, and 4 coats of polyurethane, we achieved the look I was going for. I painted the bottom of the table and chairs with a mix of Annie Sloan's Duck Egg and Paris Grey. After distressing them, I used a mix of clear and dark wax to give them that used and loved shabby look!
 |
Sorry, this is the only picture I could find of my set.
6 chairs were alike and the 2 end chairs are different,
but blends well because they match in color.
|
The set was perfect and we enjoyed it for a few months until we started thinking about hauling it across country and did we really want to do that since I could find and refurbish another set when we get there? We agreed to sell it and I listed it on Craigslist and in my Etsy store. I honestly didn't think it would sell in my Etsy store because of it's size I couldn't ship it. But, low and behold not only did I sell the set in 3 days from my Etsy store and the coolest part was that it was to a Hollywood celebrity! Yes, believe it or not, I sold my refurbished dinning set to Amanda Madano aka Willa Ford. After back and forth texting and emails, she arranged to pick up the set and much to my surprise she herself and a friend drove a Uhaul to my house. We loaded it up and just like that all those hours of painting, waxing and staining were gone. It actually broke my heart a bit to see the Uhaul truck drive away. I remembered all of the times my family sat around that table for birthdays, holidays and every meal for the last 12 years, but as one chapter ends another one opens. We have since then bought and refurbished another set and are just in LOVE with it.....for now:)
