 Now, if the weather people have gone it right, it's actually going to be dry and sunny enough for me to get outside and do some stuff today. And I've had these eight pine chairs kicking around the kitchen with their Tauy colour just really letting everything down. Now they go with the table that I've also blogged about. So if you haven't seen that already, I suggest you watch that video after it is because there is a story behind this set. But basically I got them for free from someone's front drive with their permission. So what I'm going to do today is upcycle them of course. Now I did really want to strip them but having tried that and failed miserably with the kitchen table that goes with them, I've decided to save myself a whole load of effort and use chalk paint instead. So I'm going for an Annie Sloan chalk paint partly because it's so easy to work with, partly because I only have to leave it 30 minutes in between coats and I've got eight chairs to do after all. And also because I love this colour, Paloma. It's slightly dark on the grey in the kitchen but I quite like that because I don't want it to all be sort of pale and matching. So the great thing about Tauy paint of course is that you don't have to really do much prep but the one thing you really have to do is sugar-sake for furniture, particularly when it's in a high traffic, possibly greasy area like the kitchen. And I went on a couple of Annie Sloan workshops recently and I've got some great tips including how to paint spindles and their advice was to wear a pair of rubber gloves underneath a pair of socks and this is actually for painting but I thought this is a good way to start off with the sugar soap to get rid of all the greasing brine on the spindles as well. So this is my plan of action. So that took about three minutes per chair to sugar-sope them and that's up I'm ready to paint them. So what you want to try and do is elevate them, put them on top of a table or something like that. There are a few stages to this because there are nooks and crannies we need to try and get inside though so I've got them the right way up so I'll take you through each section of it as I go. Firstly if there are any detailed cut out sections use a small artist's paint brush to get inside. It needs to be a fairly short stiff one and this took about six minutes per chair but you probably only need one coat. A good tip to prevent build up of paint around the edge of the tin is to use an elastic baron to wipe off any excess paint as you go. While the socks trick worked a treat with the sugar-soping I actually found it a bit more of a hindrance with the painting so I switched to a brush. I can highly recommend Annie Sloan brushes as they seriously speed things up particularly when you're trying to get inside the spindles. It's a good idea to get a routine going so start with the chairs upside down and the legs furthest away from you and then by the time you get around each chair they should be dry enough for you to put them the right way up to then start painting again. I found it was best to brush up and down the spindles and then around to finish them off and to get inside the grooves. Of course having started outside the heavens opened so I had to move inside. I wouldn't recommend holding a toddler whilst painting as it tends to slow you down a bit. It took about 30 minutes per chair for the first coat and then 20 minutes for the second coat. So having said a staggering amount of time painting these chairs I then felt the polymer was a little too move for what I was after so I softened it with special effects wax niaming which also goes better with the tabletop anyway and this took about 10 minutes be only need to do that once. Now I'm never satisfied with furniture being too plain and so I have to have some kind of embellishment. I went for a very simple stencil with Annie Sloan's old white chalk paint using a stencil brush and this took about four or five minutes per chair. I then finished them off with three coats of Ron Seal interior wax in white ash which you just brushed on and that took about eight minutes per coat and this brought the total time per chair to 98 minutes. So this is not a project for the faint hearted. That was exhausting. I'm not going to lie to you that was hard-working eight chairs like that with all the spin laws but definitely worth it particularly the stencil that I like that's very me that design and that brings me to my home coaching tip of the week. So whenever you're up cycling a piece of furniture or doing anything for your home make sure you put your stamp on it because it's all about confirming your identity and if you can't do that in your home then where can you do it? And that's it for the week. I'll see you next time if I hopefully recovered.