You need to go to Sherwin Williams had have them introduce you to "liquid sandpaper" or "deglosser"...check out some advice, here: https://advice.thisoldhouse.com/showthread.php?t=7745

I think timing of each layer/application will be critical...so you may want to plan it all at once.

by the way....it's a beautiful set!

Beautiful set! Go to fabulousfinisher.wordpress.com to get all the 'know-how' and the supplies you need.

Hi Stacy,
I think I have that table (wanted the chairs too, but couldn't find them!) and changed it to a total wood stain. From experience, trying to get the bleached and paint picked wood stripped and "opened up" to accept stain was a real challenge (I worked with my dad on this and we are both pretty good). I wouldn't suggest trying to change the color, because the white gets deep into the wood and seals it to color. The job took forever and every bit of our staining and blending skills.

Your request was about "glazing". If you want a "mostly light with some medium dark in the crevices" look, you can make that work using a medium stain. Trying to go dark will be very difficult, once again because of the resistance of the bleached white finish to let anything take hold, and because a dark glaze over white will just darken the white to maybe a camel shade, but no darker and the dark will go into the cracks, you could end up with a very scary look with too much contrast.

Instead, I would suggest turning your lemons to lemonade and doing one of the following:

Using the whitewashed wood as the background of a painted and distressed finished. If you degloss by washing with a TSP type product, or rubbing with steel wool, you can fairly easily go with a two step spray painted crackle, or rubbed distressed finish, (perhaps a medium camel on the background (to match the table top, which I suggest you keep the color and finish it is, just because table tops are a pain to get smooth and make resilient), and a dark brown, charcoal or other very deep color as the cracked and distressed topcoat on everything but the top.

A second option; take the chairs to a sandblaster, have the top finish taken off, leaving the whitened wood "distressed" with some "raw wood" - evaluate and perhaps rub a greyish stain into the crevices.... (paying homage to restoration hardware). If you are feeling particularly gutsy, you could wet them down and leave them in the sun for a few weeks, to "age".

Last idea, put your tongue firmly in your cheek and spray paint each chair a different color that works with your "cabin" decor. Leave the table top the same, try the base in black?

Have fun!

I think it is beautiful in this color! Once you did upholstery...you will like it even light color!

I would suggest chalk paint, in a fun color... You can paint over all wood surfaces with the stuff! Or go with a black. olive or brown chalk paint. No sanding involved!
http://www.anniesloan.com/acatalog/copy_of_How_to_use_the_paint.html

Yep, Mimi beat me to it with Annie Sloan. We've been retailing it now for a year and it's the most amazing paint ever, and we've been painting furniture for 35 years. All the excuses for painting are now irrelevant-no PREP work as all, just dip in & paint. Cover all surfaces form fabrics to plastic to concrete.

And you can make a tone on tone glaze with it with the paint on, wipe off technique. There are no brown or blacks but 30+ fab French colors to chose. Practice on boards 1st to get a feel for it-next to no smell, NO latex, water based, dries in 20-30 minutes and cleans with water & dawn soap. More fun than fingerpainting.

NOTHING you do to that set will be easy. And I don't think that it would ever come up to your standards, judging by the neatness of everything in the picture. I've got $10 that says you've never sanded anything in your life. Me either, so no offence. No need to post cash, just mail me some stamps, ok?

Agree. Unless you take it to a pro, I don't think you will be happy with the results. It will be $$$$ to reupholster those chairs, too. I don't know if your new home is your second home or not, but I think I would get quotes on everything you want done to that set and then compare that to the cost of something new.

Not at all a easy task , I'm handy but will never attempt something so adventurous , and neither should you attempt such a Feat .Lol

Check out the book - Creating the French look by Annie Sloan. It will give you some idea of what you can do with her chalk paint. Good luck with your project.

We have a family room dining table almost identical to yours. When we remodeled the kitchen, we installed cream cabinetry and added a warm glaze wash, which was done by a professional artist in place, by hand. We also asked him to apply the same glaze to the dining table and chairs. He did not sand anything before applying the glaze with a rag ... on the cabinets nor on the dining set.

I'm pretty handy but glazing furniture is not something I would attempt myself. We thought paying an artist was an excellent investment and yielded excellent results.

I may have the most experience of the lot of us, perhaps 500 items bleached, painted, glazed etc. Not to a braggard but we set the trend sin NY since the 70s and I can say the BEST product, and simple enough for a 12 y.o. girl, is Annie Sloan's paint. You can paint it, wash it, dry rag it, spray it and it takes almost NO or rudimentary instruction.

Glean what you can form the web by searching Annie Sloan Chalk Paint but I concur 100%, I would never take on your dining set with latex or other decorative paints. This armoire went from a typical shiny herringbone veneer to this finish in 6 hours.

apennameandthata you just lost $10! I spent over 53 hours sanding and filling all of my 90's oak kitchen cabinets to prep them for a pro to spray them white about 3 years ago. Saved me thousands. I never pay anyone to do something I can do myself and usually with better results. LOL! I'm not afraid to tackle this, I just want to do it right. The set was my grandmothers and is very special to me.

PS while I'm on a roll apennameandthata...I also suede painted the walls pictured (Ralph Lauren Spitfire) and assisted a friend of mine with the reapolstering you see pictured. With the right tools it's really not that difficult.

We've had about 5 women paint their cabinets, the last one this week, spent about 100. on paint and saved $12k in new cabinets. Never sand or primer again. watch the 4min vid: http://www.anniesloan.com/

Oh, you went one up on me. As you can see, i have little knowlege about redecoration and chalk paint. What i did get right was saying that you had exacting standards: you spent *53* hours sanding! Not 52 and not 54! God bless you, me and all the other obsessional people in the word.

PLEASE tell me, how many dollars an hour did you save doing the project? And name a paypal account or charity.

It's like buying a $1.5M fishing boat, burning $700 in fuel and bringing home $150 worth of fish for dinner...nothing tastes as sweet.

@apennameandthata if you ever tackled a big big project of sweat equity you would remember every hour too. I don't remember exactly what I saved. I know it was was in the thousands, somewhere over $5,000; enough to make it worth the effort. Also, if you look closely at the picture, the chairs are not lined up and there is crap all over the table. If you saw it in person you would see the cat hair all over the chairs. LOL Hardly OCD. Anyway, thank you to all the posters with helpful advise.

Stacy, I think that before you put ANY work into this dining set, you should actually move it to your new home. I think that, once there, you will find that it is too dainty for the new space. While I like an eclectic look and a varied mix, I think that this set is just too refined for the new home you are describing. It is a very pretty set, and I would think that you could sell it for a decent price and purchase something more in keeping with where you are going. I think you will save yourself a lot of time, money and aggravation if you try it out first. On the chance that it looks OK, you can always change it then.

If, on the other hand, there is no choice but to keep it, investigate the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, as others have suggested. I love the fabric you show, but I think it, once again, is too "fine" for what you want. I would go with a heavier texture/hand: something woven and tactile.

I am a faux finisher in the Kansas City area. We have a high demand to re-stain furniture and cabinetry. I would recommend finding a trained Faux Effects finisher in your area. You are "right on" with glazing your chairs and can be finished very dark. Do not even consider striping the existing stain. The stain is penetrated into the wood and would require hours and hours of work that is not necessary.

Good advice on no strip. We run faux workshops in FL and have a famous(not ours) school in our little berg here, Faux Effects. You can find a pro faux finisher or DIY with Chalk Paint in probably 20 hours work and maybe 2 cans of paint($70).

Do I sound like a Chalk Paint radical fundamentalist?

Wow! Lots of comments. You asked if you could add a darker glaze to the chairs. I don't see why not. I have added glaze to 2 night stands a desk and a dresser. I've used both the glaze wax and the liquid glaze with a rag. Both work well. But I think the liquid glaze is probably easier for a first timer. I bought a quart of slow drying tintable glaze from Lowes, and pored some into a small bowl. I think it was Ralph Lauren brand or maybe it was Valspar. I added a little black craft paint to the glaze (stopped when I reached the desired color. and it mixed it well, Then I applied it with a lightly damp cloth (cut from an old tshirt). And then went back over it with a damp cloth to remove the excess glaze I watched a video tutorial on YouTube and was shocked at how easy it was to do.

If you think you're furniture may have been sealed with wax, then you may wan to reconsider using the wax glazing tutorial on YouTube. (FYI, I just used regular Johnson's Paste wax for my wax glazes - and sure did turn out nice!

Good luck!

what about upholstering in a very dark ( brown or charcoal pattern or solid) Darken your area carpet.
place a center piece reflecting the more rustic theme. This is eclectic assimilating The rustic with the french design.

Stacy,
It is possible that the furniture was first coated with an undercoat that is a 'sealer' - sealer prevents any stain from getting into the pores of the wood. If this is the case it is very easy to take off this finish and stain the wood. However, you will have to test a spot to see if this is the case!

My dad was a manufacturer and did this to all his wood frames to get a consistent finish.

@ kathryn-peltier-design As much as I hate to admit, it you may be right. The piece may look out of place no matter what I do to it. Thank you for your honest opinion.

Stacy: Yes, I just hate to see you put a lot of time/money/work into something, get the finish you want, but then find out it ultimately doesn't look right. It's lovey, but it has very fine bones which may get lost in your new home. Maybe something in the Restoration Hardware style would work for you - still curvy and pretty, but much larger scaled. Just a thought :-)

OH, Stacy, I just saw that this was your grandmother's set :-( I am very sentimental, so I get why you want to keep this set. What about using it in a different way? How big is the table? Will you have large rooms? Maybe the table could be darkened and then used as a desk with a different chair. Then the darkened chairs, upholstered in a heavy fabric, could be used around a new table - something rustic, round??? A big pedestal table maybe, either round or rectangular (I think I'd like round most, if it would work). You might even be able to find some great old round table and paint THAT in a great color. Maybe I can find some photos of what I have in mind...

Here are a couple of table styles. I think if you split the set up and use a chunky chair with the table-as-a-desk and use your chairs with a chunkier dining table, it will work, and in fact, look quite stunning. You might not even have to darken it!

How about using an embossed leather (or even an embossed leather-look vinyl - there are some really great looking ones out there now) on the dining chars with some kind of large scale botanical or suzani on the back? The suzani I've posted has a 26" repeat, so I would center it right in the middle on the back - very dramatic. The other two would be pretty, too. I am just showing neutrals since that's what you had selected originally, but you could certainly use color! Oh, and the bottom right is an embossed leather from Edelman Leather. Check out this site for embossed vinyls
http://www.insidefabric.com/search.aspx?itemcount=32&SearchTerm=vinyl&pagenum=1.

Here is another fabric that could look very pretty, especially in the mountains! If you could find a table to paint (look at Annie Sloan Chalk Paint) you could do that in a green!

One more thing, and then I'll stop! I think you may find the light frames of the chairs very nice if you use dark upholstery. The frames would really stand out.

Couple more photos: the green dining room looks like the table might be a very dark green - very nice. The green pedestal table is just for concept - the green is way too bright. I thought the monogrammed back was another idea worth exploring!

The green painted pedestal table. Could be brown, too.

The table and chairs are too beautiful to change ... I think you might regret it some day. I wish I could purchase them from you, but I know they are sentimental. Good luck, it is a beautiful set regardless of what you do.

My guess is that Stacy wants to bring the look into the 21st century & away from the 80s pickled look.

Not that you need evidence but here's Chalk Paint going over new wood & 80y.o. finished mahogany-no sanding or priming or prep at all. And you see in the background, the 1880s French bed we did with 2 coats. This night table took about 2 hours to paint including the drawers. You can do whatever you like with your chairs.

You are all great! Thank you . A lot to think about...

I have a set just like this, and recently redid just the table top. it looks GREAT with a medium wood finish, leaving the rest in the soft white/ vanilla color. I took some of the formality out of the chairs by using a wild blue and green paisley. My sofa is a 3 toned wide blue/ white stripe.
Just doing the top was pretty easy, just a lot of cautious steps to get the depth of color right. I practiced on a leaf, that really helped a lot