A few rescued pieces of furniture, several pots of paint, and some creative stenciling add up to a jazzy redo for a lackluster dining room.
If your dining room furnishings lack visual interest or heirloom status, use paint to bring them into focus. Mismatched furniture can happily coexist in a room when unified by a cheerful palette and some decorative stenciling.
Use vintage doilies as a unique stencil to fashion a dainty runner on the table.
Gather Your Materials
- Table
- Medium and fine-grit sandpaper
- Tack cloth
- Spray-on primer
- RustOleum Painter’s Touch Satin Spray Paint: Apple Green
- Doilies
- Spray starch
- Iron
- Easy Tack repositionable adhesive
- Finish sealer
Sand all surfaces of the table and wipe thoroughly with a tack cloth. Spray the table with spray-on primer; let dry.
Iron the doilies using spray starch to make them stiff. Lay out the doilies on the table top in the desired pattern. Pick up each doily one at a time, spray with Easy Tack and place sticky-side-down on the table patting the doily firmly in place. Continue until the entire pattern is complete.
Spray the table with Apple Green; let dry.
Apply two or three coats of finish sealer, letting dry between coats.
A simple cotton panel gives a plain ladderback chair a new style silhouette.
Gather Your Materials
- Chair Covers
- Plastic sheeting
- Printable sticker paper
- Computer, scanner, and ink-jet printer
- Spray adhesive
- Large non-porous surface (a piece of tempered masonite works best)
- Krylon spray paint: #52102 Raspberry
Wash, dry, and iron the chair covers to remove sizing. Spray the back of the fabric with adhesive and place on a large non-porous surface stretching the fabric and smoothing firmly in place.
Download the pattern above and use appropriate software to size it to fit the chair cover. Set the printer on the tiled setting and print out the pattern onto printable sticker paper. You will need one set of pattern pieces for each chair cover. Tape the paper pattern pages together matching the pattern sections. Cut out the stencil. Remove the sticker paper backing and place the stencil on the prepared chair cover fabric. Smooth the stencil firmly in place. Cover all exposed chair cover fabric with painter’s tape.
Spray the fabric with light coats of Raspberry spray paint until the desired depth of color is achieved. Remove the tape and the stencil and let dry.
To ensure durability for a painted floor, top with 2-3 coats of oil-based polyurethane. If painting a floor isn’t an option in your home, paint a floorcloth instead using the reverse side of a piece of linoleum.
Gather Your Materials
- Royal Design Studio African stencil: Barka Flower
- Olympic satin sheen latex paint: Crumb Cookie #C20-1
- Sherwin Williams satin latex paint: Citrus #SW6906
- Latex primer
- Small foam roller and frame
- Mini roller tray
- Stencil adhesive spray
- Absorbent paper towels
- Finish sealer
Apply one or two coats of primer to the entire floor letting dry between coats. Base coat the floor with Citrus; let dry. To stencil the floor start in one corner next to the wall and complete the first row in Crumb Cookie across the entire floor. Continue to stencil rows until the entire floor is complete.
Apply two or three coats of finish sealer to the floor letting dry between coats.
Photography by Chris Hennessey
Painted projects by Pat Garrington
© Caruth Studio