Lucky Shamrock Blue

In this post from a while back, I showed this image:

It shows a paint chip of 'Lucky Shamrock' blue from Menard's Grand Distinction paint line.  We had a gallon of Dutch Boy's No-VOC Satin Enamel paint color matched to 'Lucky Shamrock' (how perfect is that paint color name?) and here is what I did with it:

Bill picked up four matching and very sturdy wood chairs from an estate sale for $60.  (I grew tired of trying to find mismatched chairs like I was originally planning.  All of the thrift store chairs I was finding were damaged or really tippy, and I didn't feel up for driving across the metro for four to six $10 chairs.  I'm still going to keep an eye out for fun, old, sturdy chairs for the future though.) 

The chairs were this color when we bought them:

Bill brought in one of them and it was lovely!! 

High gloss and chippy and exactly what I wanted. 

Unfortunately, when I took a look at the other three chairs a few days or weeks later, I was greatly disappointed to see how crazy dirty and grimy they were.  My plan was to wash them down and then spray poly them to seal in the old paint and prevent the paint from chipping further.  When I started to wash them down with water and a sponge...the blue paint came off.  A lot of it.  It was bad.  I thought about color matching paint to match the current blue so I could do some touch ups.  We got a sample jar for $2.50, but the touch ups looked bad.  So, we opted to repaint all four chairs in a brand new teal blue called 'Lucky Shamrock', after spray priming them. 

Painting dining chairs has to be one of the most annoying things to paint aside from staining a deck.  When I was painting the chairs, I realized that because these chairs had been previously painted (in green, red, blue and white) there were many, many drip marks from bad paint jobs that I couldn't do much about.  I wish I had stripped all the old paint off, but the thought honestly hadn't crossed my mind at the time.  I was in prime and paint mode, and I wanted the option of sanding down the chairs and making them look all chippy again with different paint colors showing through. 

If I go the chippy route, I would have to poly over the chairs.  So for now, we have Lucky Shamrock colored dining chairs that are so far from perfect it is laughable.  Perhaps I'll strip them in the future and try painting them again or maybe I'll take advantage of all the layers of paint and chip them up.  Regardless, we are enjoying them now.  We bought the chairs in May, and we just put them into our dining room this week.  The process was long and annoying, but I love how they look in the room.  The blue chairs and the green chalkboard are lovely together!!  And my floral Pier 1 chairs pull things together nicely.

I love that girl!!

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