This lovely (coughs) wicker set was left by the previous owners. The colors (and the pictures don’t do it justice) were so awful they reeked of old junk. Wicker wasn’t my style but I had seen some of those gray resin chairs and wanted to try to achieve that look. They needed a little TLC but were solid and comfy.
To start: I hosed them down, rubbed them with a plastic kitchen brush and allowed to dry completely. These chairs also had some serious paint flakes so I was careful to wash these on a sheet that caught the chips to be dried and tossed later.
Sanding wicker isn’t really effective, but I lightly hit it with a 220 grit. ( I always makes sure to sand any piece I work on, it really makes the finish that much more professional. )
Since the paint job was in such poor shape and these chairs were going to be outside, I used a oil based white primer painted on. My mother helped me paint these and she complained the whole time that we had to use oil based primer. She say to spray paint them and be done with it. Well…I had a plan in mind and carefully researched this as I don’t like re-doing projects in a year or two because they didn’t hold up.
After they were good and dry I made a watered down mix of acrylic craft paints. I used dark brown, gray and black. The paint was quite thin, enough to leave pigment behind but also soaked onto the cracks and joints. To my horror, they looked awful! I was waiting for an “I told you so” from my mother, but instead we laughed to tears about all our hard work and how it looked like really dirty, moldy chairs!
Well, I left these chairs half done for a while, discouraged at the finish. Somehow I got the determination to finish them, and I’m so glad I did! Somehow after a few coats of the thinned out acrylic paint and after applying clear gloss spray clear coat they looked exactly like I wanted! The paint dried evenly instead of just in the cracks and the clear coat tied it all together! I made these a few years ago, and I have re-sprayed their clear coat once just to maintain the finish and they still look great!
