Hi, thanks for reading. Just appreciate any advice you might be able to offer.

We have some older wicker cane chairs that we are really getting bored of. And we were wondering what we would need to do to prepare them for painting?

I know you can paint them because obviously, we have seen them painted. But when they are plain or natural looking, they do feel like have been coated in some sort of varnish. Or maybe something to stop the wicker from getting stained by hands rubbing over the arms.

So what would we do to remove whatever coating is on them? Or could we just give them a rough sand and just paint over it? Maybe a spray can might be better?

We really wanted to paint them a smarter, modern colour like olive or duck egg blue or maybe even a petrol colour would be fun too. But we don't want to do all this work if it only going to flake off after a bit.

Does anyone know if it is even possible to paint wicker chairs that have not been painted before?

Sanding the wicker now, does seem to be a bit fruitless because you could never get into all the nook and crannies. So maybe we are looking for the correct paint stripper or varnish stripper. If you could recommend a brand name, that would be cool. Also please suggest a process or application technique that you think would be best.

We don't mind doing the work, we are always doing fun little jobs like this. But really we are both a little unsure as to what the end result is really going to look like.

Maybe we could do a little experiment on one of the chairs and see what happens. I'm not sure they are actually worth much and frankly I'm not that bothered if I ruin them. Anyway if you have any other ideas, that would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Barry