Several years ago, I bought a child sized table and two chairs for Melody to use in her playroom. At the time, it was unfinished, but I always intended to paint it. But in the meantime, Melody worked her creativity on the surface, coloring on it, spilling glitter glue, and all together enjoying it. But we finally decided that at 6 years old, she ought to have a finished table and chairs. Over the Independence Day holiday recently, we determined the project would commence.

After a visit to Home Depot’s paint department, we had all we needed. Melody was very specific about the paint color. She chose a beautiful violet color, and wanted white flowers painted on top. So, with stencils, paint, brushes, sand paper, and primer, we began. You can see there was quite a lot of crayon to remove. The play-doh residue came off quite easily. The glitter glue disintegrated and covered everything in powdered glitter. Once the surfaces were clean and smooth, we primed.

At this point, Melody lost interest in the project for the day. The primer dried overnight and I applied a second coat the following day. After that, I sanded the surfaces to take down any significant bush marks, dribbles or other imperfections.

Next, paint.

It is very purple! Looks like we need to tone it down a little bit with some white flowers.

The stencils turned out very pretty. They are Martha Stewart Crafts stencils and we used a foam “pouncer” to apply the paint. I am no pro at stenciling, but I read the instructions. I have to say, the Martha Stewart Crafts instructions were thorough and very helpful. Melody did the larger flowers and I did the small ones on her chairs. She wants me to make pads for the seats. I’ll see what I can do. Maybe that is something a Gramma could do for Christmas, heh, hint, hint.

The table and chairs are now in her playroom and she uses them to write in her summer journal, color and play. Hopefully some day, she will use the with her own children!