Now that Halloween is over, I'm painting all our furniture black.

O.K. maybe just some of it.

We bought a boring 1990's house that had no real character and have a lot of work to do. We didn't get an awesome creepy Victorian, those were way outside of our price range. We also moved all of our hand-me-down or otherwise free furniture into the new house. It had been completely utilitarianly perfect, but I felt the need to do some long needed updating once I realised that new furniture won't be bought at some sale in a group. None of that stuff appealed to me. 

We had a lot of perfectly 1990's era furniture. Actually most of it is, unfortunately. 

Not to complain too much though, the kitchen table and end tables were basically free and real oak, I think. I have never liked the kitchen chairs, they are just not my style, but I can't put form before function on our budget. I learned a lot about the history of the pressback chair and appreciate the mass produced manufactured ones in a Warholian way.

So my dilemma was that we have a house full of old hand me down furniture and part of me has this innate need to feel like a grown up and not have a bunch of hand me downs. The other part of me is that I'm not ready to drop a load of cash on a brand new generic set of furniture that will probably get handed down some day and not be appreciated.

So we decided to keep what we have and try to update it. I am not a fan of the busy patterning of the chair and we are eradicating all the "honey" stained wood in the house (there's TONS of it). So I decided to try glossy black to contrast the refurbished and new glossy white trim we are working on. I figured the black will make the pieces visually retreat and simplify the busy designs. 

(note the lack of new glossy white trim)

Here is the chair with one coat tinted primer and two coats of paint. I did a third that is currently drying. Some notes on this project are that I am using a liquid sander that is found near the strippers at the home improvement store. It has way less fumes so I can use it indoors. It seems to work pretty well. I also made a mistake of setting plants on the tables 24 hours after they were painted. I think they will need a few days to really cure before putting heavy lamps and plant pots on them. I'm make another post after Thanksgiving when the whole kitchen set is finished.