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Hand Painted Oak Kitchen Table and Chairs, Pontefract

This Blog was first published on Traditional Painter

Furniture painting, hand painted table and chairs
Hand painted table and chairs

For this project I traveled to Darrington near Pontefract to transform an oak kitchen table and four chairs. The client was changing her kitchen and wanted to update her table and chairs by painting it in a plain colour. I used Empire by Tikkurila, a fabulous furniture and kitchen paint that I had accurately matched to one of the leading designer off white colours.

Preparation

As I mentioned the table and chairs were made of oak and had originally been distressed to give it an aged look. As a result there were hundreds and hundreds of little holes and dints that would need to be filled. Before I got to that stage however I started by giving everything a thoroughly good clean and degrease with good old Krudcutter Original. Next I sanded everything with 180 grit Abranet sanding strips. Once sanded it was time for priming. As I mentioned there was a huge amount of filling to do so I plumped for Zinsser Bin high adhesion shellac primer as my primer. I really like ZinBin and chose it in this case for three main reasons –

(1) It resolves the potential problem of the oak ‘tanning’

(2) It has great opacity

(3) It is dry within a hour

With it drying so quickly it allowed me to clean, sand, prime and fill everything in a day, leaving the filler overnight to properly harden. In this case I liberally used Fat Hog Fine Surface Filler, which I have found works well with very shallow holes and dints.

The original table
Painted furniture preparation and painting
Extensive sanding of the kitchen table and chairs before painting

Next day I sanded everything back and by the time I had finished much of the primer had been sanded back along with the filler. I had been expecting this as I had had to apply the filler so liberally to cover all the holes and without priming I wouldn’t have been able to see all the holes 🙂

I then applied a further coat of Zinsser Bin and over the next couple of days applied three coats of Empire, lightly sanding between layers and occasionally filling the odd area that needed a little more work. To apply the Empire I used my tried and tested combination of Dulux high density mini foam rollers and my trusty Purdy Monarch Elite.

Once finished everything was lovely and smooth with no brush marks – a great transformation and a whole new look and feel for the room. Following the success of this project the client has asked me to book a date in to faux marble her real marble dining room as there is some damage to the top. Happy marbling times ahead!

painted table and chairs, Pontefract. Painted by specialist furniture painter, Lee Simone
Hand painted table and chairs in Pontefract.

Lee covers most of Yorkshire and is within easy reach for furniture painting projects in Harrogate, Knaresborough, Ripon, Thirsk, Wetherby, Leeds, Otley, Ilkley, York, Skipton, Pontefract, Wakefield, Halifax, and all the surround areas.