DIY Picnic Table and Updated Plastic Chairs

Sorry I have been MIA lately, it took me 3 days to get this post together!  Life has been getting in the way of my blogging but the projects are still happening behind the scenes so stick with me, I'll get back in my weekly groove soon!

In a previous post I talked about all the Summer projects I was hoping to do and I showed you that awful picture of my backyard.  In case you forgot....

Yikes!  You can't really see it in this photo but off to the left I have a concrete patio with a canopy over top.  It's nothing special right now but it's a place to sit and relax on a hot day (if we ever get one!).  Last Summer, we had a nasty little squirrel that literally ate all of our patio furniture.  I wasn't about to go buy new cushions for it to eat again, so I decided to re-purpose some stuff we already had laying around.  

I got my inspiration from several places.  I liked the colors used in these projects found at Cheeky Kitchen and Where The Mermaids Mur Mur and I liked the idea of using a door and making a table out of it.  

This photo had no destination, just a picture that I found on Pinterest.

My disclaimer on this post...I mentioned life has been getting in the way of blogging...well that also means during the making of this project we didn't do a good job of documenting the project and keeping track of the website we found to make our table.  Sorry!

We had an old door that used to be our front door.  It was so big I thought it would make a great table.  Several of the "door to table" things I found on Pinterest had no destination website so we searched Google to find a tutorial.  We found a great one!  But I didn't save it...

We went to the store and bought the legs of the table.  They were about $20.  The rest of the wood for the bottom, we had.  We also bought some brackets to attach the legs, which were around $10 total.  The most expensive supply was the paint.  I used two cans of spray paint primer and two cans of the blue I painted it.  I would say we spent around $50 in supplies when all was said and done.  Here's the before and after:

Not bad right?  My favorite feature is the box you see above.  I can't take credit for the construction.  Chris, my husband that has to do all the manual labor behind my projects LOL, took care of all the building and he made this box that fit into the space where the window used to be.  I may put a garbage bag in it and use for trash or I may store salt, pepper, napkins, etc.  We'll see!  Since we can't find the tutorial we followed, if you'd like more detailed instructions, just ask, I'm happy to provide them or answer specific questions.

Next...you see those brightly colored chairs around my new table?  They didn't come from the store that way, I painted them!  They started out that dull, taupe color.  You know the ones, everyone has them.

First, I cleaned all the chairs and let them air dry.  Then, I primed each of them with plastic spray paint primer.  There is specific primer just for plastic so make sure you get that one.  There is also specific paint for use on plastic but I didn't like the colors.  So I used regular indoor/outdoor spray paint in gloss and I bought two brandst, Krylon and Rustoleum.  I originally did that because I couldn't find all the colors I wanted in one brand.  After trying both, I had better success with the Rustoleum brand, but results may vary so be prepared to test!

A word of advice, let your paint dry thoroughly in between each coat.  I got some bubbling that you can't see in the pictures but I'm not too happy with it.  Normally I'd freak out about a flaw like that but they are outside and may be a wreak by the end of the Summer so I'm not going to sweat it.  Also, I set up shop in my garage to spray because of course it decided to be windy the day I was working on this.  Even though I was inside, dust still managed to end up on the chairs, so save a project like this for a day when it's not windy!

Each chair took two coats and in some cases, three.  I went through A LOT of paint.  Six chairs, one can of paint each, each can was $3-$4.  I spent well over $20 in paint.  Maybe more, I lost track, I went to the store so many times for different things.

Over all turning the door into a table gets a PIN.  It was relatively easy with the help of Chris and I'm happy with the end result.  If I had to do over again, I probably paint the table instead of spray painting it.  I think it would have turned out a little nicer but for what we are using it for it's fine.

In terms of the chairs, I'm on the fence.  I'm not 100% happy with how they came out and buying all the primer and spray paint ended up costing more than I would have liked.  If I had to do the chairs over again, I would probably stick to one color and waited until I found the paint on sale. BUT I do like how everything looks together so it gets a PIN with modifications :-)

Up next, I'm going to be featuring some recipe tests from two guest bloggers, Joanna and Kristina, stay tuned!