Let's Go Stripe-ing

We picked up this chair and table set for a few bucks on Craigslist and they are perfect on our cute little front porch. 

 

My original plan was to paint the chair frames white and either sew or buy new seat and back slings.  From afar, the white slings look pretty decent, but up close they were really dirty and stained.  I searched in town for some outdoor fabric to sew new slings, but I couldn't find any of the holey vinyl type fabric that was on the original chairs.  And I wanted the holey fabric so after rain, it would dry quickly.  Next I resorted to looking for new slings to purchase, but there weren't any affordable ones that I could find.  

So the hunt for new slings was a bust!  Moving on to plan c - spray paint! 

After removing the slings from the chair, I gave them a coat of primer and then white spray paint (on each side) to bring them back to their original bright white color.  I only painted one to begin with, to make sure after the paint was applied, the slings would still be plenty flexible.  It passed the test, I couldn't even tell they were painted! Then I created a template out of cardboard to use as my guide to paint yellow stripes. 

Here are all the pieces after painting

And as you can see, I decided to attack the table with that same yellow can of spray paint.

After painting the slings and table and putting them back on the chairs, I decided I kind of liked the look of wood.  Our front porch is already white, so maybe painting the chairs white would be too much.

The chairs were still kind of in rough shape though, so I used a sander to strip them of their original color.  Once they were sanded down, I stained them.  They ended up darker than I had intended, but that's OK, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.  The final step was applying a sealing/protective finish to the wood since these are outdoors and will get wet. 

Now we just need to plant some flowers in front of our house, so these chairs aren't the only bright colored objects in our front yard! (Mom, please bring your green thumb back to visit sometime soon ;) )