Refinishing Dining Chairs

So a little background about my dining room set & chairs. When we moved into the house 2 years ago, I set my sight on having Thanksgiving here. I wanted everyone to see my new home, not really thinking about all the work it would take it to get it ready for company. None the less, I bought a dining room table and 4 matching chairs at Home2Home in Dayton. Awesome store for second hand furniture! Anyway, I saw these 2 additional chairs and thought that I could strip them and restain them to match the other set. They were $10 each which was a steal!

The chairs came home and after trying to strip them twice, sanding them, using a Dremmel sander the stain never fully came off. So I decided that I want to paint them (and the other 4 chairs) black. I'm leaving the table as-is and will get a black sideboard.

So here are the chairs after all the sanding:

I sanded and started refinishing these babies. Pictures, my problems and more after the jump.
Here you can see where I was having difficulty removing the stain. The lattice on the back of the chair was so delicate and I couldn't get anything small enough in there to remove the stain.

 You can see on the leg one of my problem areas. I used an environmentally safe stain remover. However, if you don't get all the stain off, it "clumps". So even after sanding this 10 times, I couldn't get the stain off the leg. The chair is completely smooth but the area is saturated with stain.

So black paint here I come! I went to Lowes and had a chat with a paint lady. She recommended the valspar paint for my chairs. I went with the paint over spray paint because I'm a control freak with projects. With spray you get more drips. However, it would have been easier to get in the lattice work with spray paint.

Here were my initial tools for the project. Paint, paint tray, foam roller (good for even coverage on wood), cardboard to protect the floor and a cloth drop cloth. I am really messy so double coverage is better for me. Every time I left my workspace I checked my socks for paint. I've been known to track paint across a room <opps!>.

So I laid my chair down and went to work

The lattice work was challenging

I actually got out an acrylic paint brush, and used that to get into the small spaces. I waited 2 hours in between coats to make sure it was dry.

I would should you how it looks now, but it's not done yet. I didn't sand the very top of the chair smooth and its bothering me. So I'm re-sanding that part to get a better finish. The color looks fabulous and since I'm not feeling too hot, the chairs will have to wait until next week.

What do you think so far? I'm new to the crafting and blogging space and would LOVE to hear some feedback.