Tag: thrift store shopping

Our country home, Star Hill, has a porch that runs along two sides of the 950 square foot “mansion”. The home is in east Texas, in a lakeside neighborhood. Our lifestyle in the country is slow moving, with a lot of time spent outside. We have two seasons here; hot and chilly. Right now I have two great rockers and a vintage swing on the porch which you will see soon as we get the porch updated. I also have two plastic chairs on the front porch that I I got from my mom. They were forest green and faded when we got them. I painted them with brown paint two years ago and have them on either side of a chest I got for three dollars then painted our door color to store bird seed. The plastic chairs are functional, but way less than amazing.

In my resale shopping I have been casually looking for some sturdy, cheap, rustic chairs that would hold up on the front porch and look like they belong in the country. I already had chairs that worked so this was not an emergency.
If I can give you one piece of resale shopping advice it is for you to get to know the owners of the resale shops you like. Deal directly with the owner when possible. Treat them fairly, tell them about your projects, bring in pictures of your finished projects, and always, always, always be nice. Even when the cost of an item is more than I am willing to pay, I never insult the shop owner. My favorite thrift store owner, Patricia, knows me well. She knows that I will be back and she knows that I am not afraid of a little work. On my last trip I told her I was looking for assorted chairs. I am planning on a chair weekend for Sweet Amanda’s friends. We are going to each redo a chair using our combined paint, accessories, and ideas. It should be fun. Patricia let me know that she had three matching chairs that need work she was willing to part with for $5.00 each. The chair bases were old and sturdy but the backs were loose and several spindles were unglued. I decided to take the best two. I loved the original vinyl on the seats and the nailhead trim. It did not have any rips or tears so I wanted to keep it. I knew as soon as I saw these chairs they would not be a part of the chair party. They were going on the porch. I thought I was going to paint the chairs a color of paint I bought a while back but did not use. It is a sort of cedar color that should blend well with the soon to be coming new cedar posts and rails on the porch but I decided the more I looked at the chairs the more I liked the weathered look.
The tricky part of the process was getting the spindles into the holes at one time. It took two sets of hands all working at once. So glad Larry was there to help out.

After the gluing, I taped off the vinyl and sealed all the wood with polyacrylic. The sealant will protect the wood from the elements. I also saddle soaped the vinyl to make sure it was clean. They should hold up well for years.
This is a definite upgrade for the front porch. The chairs will come in handy when we need to add chairs to the table on the deck too.