2 Old Barstools Get a Makeover! October 15, 2015 13:13 4 Comments

We've had the same two barstools for over 12 years!  I've recovered the tops of them 3 times.  But after raising kids and having countless dinner parties, these poor barstools looked like they had reached the end of the road!  Each time my husband catches a glance of them, he threatens to throw them away. But I just felt like they still had some life in them and I convinced him to give me one last attempt at giving them a makeover.

So after watching several HGTV design episodes last night, I was inspired to tackle this project.  I began by removing the old fabric on top; 3 layers of fabric to be exact!  I finally got down to the original blue cushion on top.  I then cleaned the legs and took the hammer and hammered in a few ends that were getting loose.  

I decided to use a white chalkpaint for the base.  I just love chalkpaint; saves the time of having to sand the item and is easy to apply and dries fast!  Because I was attempting all this in the middle of the night, I decided I would paint inside.  I didn't really have any newspaper to cover the floor, but I remembered I did have some plastic table cloths from the dollar store.  These come in handy and are an inexpensive, large piece of plastic to paint on top of.  

Painting was a little more time consuming then I had envisioned, only because the base has several spindles and the wood must be painted on all sides.  I put a total of two coats on each base and a coat of wax.

What a difference paint makes!  

After my second coat of paint dried, I grabbed my staple gun and my glue gun and started working on recovering the cushion.  On a side note - We are beginning a redesign at our home and switching out the brown color palette with a lighter and brighter design.  I happened to have some amazing fabric in my craft room - I tend to buy extra fabric that catches my eye when I go to the store and save it for a midnight project, such as this :)  The fabric is a beautiful pattern in white, with very light brown colors adorned with a turquoise bird.  I knew I was saving this fabric for something special!

So I cut the fabric to size and began wrapping it over the cushion.  I used my staple gun to staple it in place and used my glue gun to glue areas that were too narrow for my staple gun.  Recovering the cushions were the fastest part of the project and took less than 45 minutes total.

Below are the results:

I'm pleased with the results.  They are definitely, lighter and brighter and they look like new barstools.  Most importantly, my husband said "wow" when he saw them and is looking forward to keeping these barstools for several more years!!

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