Goodbye Red Orange Oak - Part 1 Chairs - Gel Stain

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First off, let me tell you staining red oak is a pain! It's not really red.... it's more of a burnt orange and personally I'm not a fan. That wood is dying to stay orange! The last red oak table I refinished, I ended up bleaching it. It turned out beautiful!!

Bleaching Red Oak Table

We loved it! I had bought some wing chairs later on, that I had intended to recover, but never happened. Then our family started to grow (with more grandbabies💗) and we needed something just a bit bigger. The search on Facebook Market started. (Wow, looking back at the photo... our home has gone through some significant changes.) 😍

Let me just add right here.... refinishing tables and chairs is a lot of work. Definitely worth it, but here comes a long post.... You can always scroll to the end to see the beautiful new table and chairs. 😁 That's why I split this post into 2 parts. Part 1 will be the chairs and Part 2 will be the table.

Here is the table and chairs I found on Facebook Market.

Before Dining Table and Chairs side view

Okay... I wasn't too sure of the table, but I liked the small profile of the chairs... We ended up getting the whole thing for $200. Not bad for solid wood!

Now comes the work. Dear Lord, please let this be the last table I refinish!!

Let's start with a good scrubbing. Of course, we popped out the chair backs and removed the seats. Those will be recovered with new fabric.

The chairs take more tedious and detail work, plus recovering them. Here's the plan... scrub, lightly sand, then use a gel stain. Gel stain doesn't require the previous stain to be completely removed. I do not have the patience to sand every inch of stain off of these chairs, no thank you.

So, only a light sanding is required, just to rough up the finish.

Ready to stain! I love General Finishes Gel Stain. I used it years ago on some cabinets in our garage at Stonybrook. For those cabinets I use the color Java. They turned out beautiful!

Staining Cabinets - Gel Stain

This time we used the color Antique Walnut. This gel stain is amazing to work with! Seriously, it's so easy!

I applied two coats. The only issue I had with the chairs was a couple of the legs had some damage. I filled them in with some wood filler. Wood filler is supposed to accept stain. It does a bit, but its never the same depth of color...

I ended up painting some brown paint on that area to blend it in some more. You can hardly tell it was damaged.

Now that the chairs are stained... let's move on to the cushions. I removed all of the old fabric.

The backs and the seats each had their own set of problems... let's start with the backs. I chose some white vinyl that had a 'leather look' for the front and a 'antelope' print for the back. Here came the problem. The vinyl had NO stretch to it, so it wrinkled on the curve. Um... that's a no for me.

Then I thought, what if I cut the curve off?? So, I flipped the cushion upside down to get and idea of what it would look like.

I loved it! Plus it made it soooo much easier to cover! Time to cut all of the backs to square them up!

Making the seat back covers was going to get a bit tricky. I have to sew them together at the top because, the top seam will be exposed. So after all the fabric was cut out, I sewed the top seam.

Before I started to attach the fabric to the seat back, I had to cut the curve off of the foam padding. Then I had to add a thin fabric to the back, because the antelope fabric was too sheer.

So, here we are starting to staple the fabric onto the seat backs. I used an electric stapler, that made it so much easier.

Finished up the sides and corners. Corners are always fun... not!

Last step was to hot glue the antelope fabric down. Once I folded and ironed the seams, it was pretty easy to flip the fabric over and glue it all secure. I used glue to secure the seat backs into the frame of the chair.

Okay, here we have the seat back finished. I love how we now have a handle to pull out the chairs. Now it's time to start the seats.

I had the same problem with the slight curve on the front of the seats. So, to make it easier, I cut off the front edge just a bit. It's hardly noticeable.

I covered one of the seats and had hubby try it. It wasn't soft enough, which I figured. I thought I had some extra foam in the basement. Yes, I did! I found just enough for all six chairs!

Covering seats are pretty straight forward. I usually staple the front and backs, then work on the sides and lastly the corners.

We are in business!! Now the only issue I have right now is that when you sit in the chair.... it goes WHOOOSH! Hmmm... I've never had that problem before. But after a couple of weeks it hit me. The last time I recovered chairs, I was putting fabric over the old fabric. And yes, it was the same type of vinyl.

So, here's my theory... When chairs are covered with breathable fabric, you have the ability to pull the fabric even tighter. Then the foam has most of the air pushed out of it. Then when you add a vinyl, it's already super tight. I will be trying that in the near future on one of my chairs. Yes, it will be a pain, but I think it just might work.

Here's the finished chairs and table.