Distressed Chair - With a Quote!

About 6 years ago a 'friend' left a pair of wooden kitchen chairs at our house after one of our parties. I figured that since I'd reminded her about the chairs a good 10 times (and she didn't come and get them), they were mine for the keeping.

So I took one of the chairs (the one on the right) and sanded it back before I painted it with a primer:

Then I painted it a brilliant shade of blue:

I was about to start the 'distressing' process, when I decided I wanted to stamp a quote into the top rung on the back of the chair. I spray painted that rung black, so that the letters would show up once they were stamped and the black paint had been sanded off:

The quote I chose was from Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world".


To stamp the quote into the wood, I used metal stamps from the automotive shop. They are typically used to stamp VIN numbers on engines, but they worked a treat on the wood. If I was going to do this again, I wouldn't have bothered with spray painting the rung on the chair. I would have simply stamped the letters and then coloured them in with a Sharpie once done.

Once the distressing process on the chair was finished (I used a mouse sander to cause the distress), I gave it a coat of a non-toxic clear coat and popped it in Little Snicker's room:

This is about the only picture I have where you can't see Matty's hands ready to spring into action if Little Snicker even looked close to falling!