Let me get that chair for you...

It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of our dining set. It's a cheap set, that looks it, it is nothing special. In fact I wrote about desperately trying to find new chairs, to no avail, here. I finally decided to do something about it, something small and probably not extremely noticeable to most of you, but to me it makes all the difference:

Here's the boring/practically new/feel too guilty to get rid of chairs before...

Why do pictures have to turn out sooo much worse when it's a rainy day?...Ugh..
See...boring...
Lately I've been in a "work with whatcha got" mindset, so I decided to try to add some uniqueness to the chairs myself. I felt like they just needed something, anything to make them a little more special. Then I came across this:

via

and this:

via

And then these:

Vintage brass pulls...and gorgeous...and only $6....

It's been a long time fad to add pulls to the back of dining chairs. Most people claim it's because they don't like everyone touching the top of the chair to pull it in and out from the table, therefore the pulls serve this purpose, and maybe sometimes this is true (I could see it for upholstered chairs with children in the house), but generally speaking, I don't buy it. I think we, as designers or simply decorators of our own homes, tend to think we have to give function to every beautiful thing in our house...an excuse if you will, and t's not necessary. Some things we do because it looks good.
I added a light coat of gold spray paint to these beauties:

I know, Gasp...yes I sprayed vintage hardware, but they are mine, all mine...Enter evil laugh here...Also, this awkward shot shows the only way to spray them...

I am not going to say I added these pulls to my chairs because they serve any purpose, other than I love the way they look. In fact, I didn't screw them in, I simply used liquid nails. Here they are drying:

They are absolutely sturdy enough to be used to pull the chairs out, but I don't know that they necessarily make that task any easier, or keep the top of my chairs any cleaner.
But they sure are pretty...and here's proof:

Yes, it's a very small update, but those are always my favorite.

How about you? Any other pretty updates to ugly furniture?