When Landis and I were first married, we received a lot of old furniture from people that didn't want it anymore. Every item of furniture in our home in the beginning was used by someone else before. Little by little we would buy something to replace these items that would make the home more ours. One item in our home was a long debate over keep or toss. That was our dining table. A short round breakfast table with two leaves and 4 rolling chairs with stained cushions and rounded wicker backs. As newlyweds, it was fun rolling around our un-carpeted home in our chairs. However, as years went on, the table was just too old and ugly to look at. There were times I've threatened to Landis that the old ugly table would be chopped into little pieces and burned in the fireplace by the time he got home from work. The table was an ugly old brown color which wasn't all that bad, but really it was the chairs that drove me insane. The sunken in cushions that showed every stain. The pieces of wood that would pinch your arm as the wood would separate while you leaned back to relax and then tightened when you moved. The arms that had fallen off. The marks on the wall from the toddler that loved to roll them everywhere and use to get into everything. And the holes made by fallen toddler feet through the wicker backs. It was something I terribly wanted to get rid of but buying a new table was just not in our poor college budget. One day my sister in law gave me the idea to paint the table. So I bought spray paint and painted the table black one day while my husband was gone. Spray painting a wooden table did not go well. The paint was rough and more embarrassing than the ugly brown. But since I had made it worse my husband was forced to step in. He sanded down the rough black spray paint and paint brushed smooth strokes of black paint. It did wonders and I was starting to like the table. The chairs however, were still an issue for me. Then when Landis accepted an offer to move from AZ to CO for work, we agreed that our 'ever so loved' chairs were not welcome to move with us. Our first months in Colorado our little family sat on ice coolers and step stools. Slowly we searched thrift stores and Craigslist eventually finding 3 un-matching wooden chairs that we painted each a different color. We do still want one more chair and have the perfect one in mind but haven't found it yet. We aren't in a hurry though, we only need 3 chairs right now anyways.
The ugly chairs I hated so much
The horrible hole
The table before we painted it black, this was with one leaf. As you can see the ugly brown was even worse with the leaf because the of use the table had gotten over the lesser used leaves.
Our table now. Much more our style. Much less embarrassing. And something we want to keep with us for years to come. Something once hated has now turned into one of the few items of furniture we've willingly kept since the day we got married.
