Revive Outdoor Furniture

Sometimes a nice set of wooden furniture gets a rough treatment outdoors. Left alone in the elements it can start to look pretty shabby. But the story doesn't have there. It's easy to give wooden furniture a new life and it's not hard to do.


This Instructable was brought to you by Krylon

My coworker Lee had some furniture on his back deck that had been forgotten for too long. I can't blame him, he's a busy guy with a couple of kids, but his outdoor living room was starting to look like a mess. He did try to fix up one of the chairs on his own, but it came out... wrong. It was time for some intervention.

 - Krylon dual spraypaint
 - Krylon spray stain
 - spray adhesive
 - Sandpaper or orbital sander (even better)

We also made a series of stencils for all the members of Lee's family for a personal touch.

The previous day, we hosed down the furniture to get most of the dirt off, but to make each chair as clean as possible we also went to work with an orbital sander. For all the hard to reach areas we used a couple of other pieces of sandpaper.

You don't need to go too aggressively with the sander. The results will still be outside in the rain, but it still helps to smooth out the wood and get rid of any dirt that the wash couldn't get rid of.

Each stencil needs to be applied to each chair. To do this you want to make sure that the stencil is centered, level, and has extra pieces of paper next to it to prevent overspray.

To center the stencil, mark the middle point of the stencil and the chair with a pencil.

Now apply a light coat of spray adhesive on the back and wait for a minute for it to dry out a bit. This way you can remove it without leaving residue.

So apply the stencil to the chair, using the center marks as a guide. Step away to check to see if it is level. If not, remove and adjust until you're happy with it.

With everything all set, tape or glue other pieces of paper to the side of the stencil.

Apply light coats of paint to the stencil, moving left to right or vice versa. Start each coat off the edge of the stencil and then move all the way past it. When you're getting close to being happy with the coverage give it more time to dry between coats.

With enough paint on thee, peel off the stencil to admire your work.

Put the chair onto a tarp and break out the spray stain. Fortunately, spray stain is more forgiving than spraypaint since the excess will be wiped off in the next step. So go ahead and have fun spraying all over and laying on a nice even coat.

With a rag or some paper towels, wipe down the chair to get rid of excess stain and get a super even finish on the wood. If you leave thick stain on top it will take much, much longer to dry out and be sticky. Which is just all sorts of no fun.

With everything done, leave the furniture outside for a little bit to dry out completely. Enjoy the new look and get ready for a small get together with friends to show it off.