Thonet Chairs Back to Original

Thonet Chairs Before

Thonet Chairs After

A customer had acquired two Thonet chairs at a resale shop, however, someone had painted these expensive designer chairs with black spray paint and never bothered to mask off the vinyl seats or back, so the black paint left a shadowed over-spray. She preferred to keep the chairs original, thus it was necessary to remove the paint and clean up the vinyl, and strip the paint from the wood part of the chairs.


The first step to was remove the wood from the vinyl and strip off all the black paint. The chairs were uncharacteristically heavy, because of their high quality. She wanted to stay with a lighter shade of stain, so we selected pecan, which was close to the original shade. Once the paint was stripped, the wood beneath the paint came shining through. It was birch, a hardwood, and very lovely. The wood took the stain very well, highlighting the great lines of the chairs.

Removing the paint was another story entirely, as it was very difficult to do and required many hours of hard work, hand-scrubbing with a small wire brush. Luckily the vinyl was durable enough to withstand the scrubbing, which was necessary in order to remove the paint. After we scrubbed as much as we thought humanly possible, we used a gentle cleaner to remove any remaining residue. The chairs had taken on a whole new look, closer to what they should have looked like and much closer to original. My customer was thrilled!