Refurbishing a garden table & chair set - and a little more....

 We have a patio in front of the kitchen which is a suntrap in the spring and in the summer. It's lovely to grab coffee and breakfast whilst sitting in the sun watching the ducks and swans gliding around in the canal.  

Last year, we used a very ancient Ikea table, bench and two chairs which have sat out in the garden for the best part of 3 years - and it was pretty clear that they probably wouldn't make it through another winter if we didn't get some maintenance on them.  I bought them when I moved to the Netherlands and had a tiny garden which I kitted out with a cheap and cheerful set of garden furniture. At the time, I really didn't want to spend a lot of money on the garden, and I wasnt thinking for the longer term, so I bought the simplest furniture I could, and decided that if it needed throwing away in handful of years, I'd still have had value from them. The furniture is looking quite shabby now - the majority of the stain has peeled away, a main slat on the bench has broken away, and there is lichen growing all over them. 

With W itching to play with his new Festool sander, and a beautiful sunny spring day, it seemed like fate! First task was to sand down all the surfaces to make sure that there was no loose material that would discolor or disrupt the new coating. Most of the sanding was done with a fairly coarse grain pad - a 60 grit for the majority of the frames, and the table surface was given an extra smooth finish with a graduated sanding up to 120 grit.

A. had previously found some old wood that was a close match to the broken slat,trimmed it to size and attached it in the gap. W sanded the new bar back to make it fit in as much as possible with the original. Then over to me to wield paint brush and wood stain to get everything painted a cheerful rich green - including Luca who developed green zebra stripes due to incautious inquisitiveness. We ran out of paint half way through, so we had to do a quick run to the DIY store to get a top up.

A few hours drying in the sun and we have once again a lovely table & chairs set on the patio outside the kitchen to have breakfast in the sun. Here they are, ready to sit at and watch the world go by.

Looking forwards to the next weekend!

This weekend, though, I got into a bit of overdrive mode and decided to keep going with the sanding and painting. The side window in the stables has peeling paint - and the wooden frame is getting exposed to the elements. The new sander zipped through the task in no time at all, and I spent the dying light hour of the evening getting the first coat of paint over the newly prepared surface.

 I still need to do another coat so I haven't got a done photo yet, I'll update this page when complete.