Hello friends! How is everyone this fine Friday...friday the 13th to be exact, eek! I just finished another cute and simple DIY that I thought I should write about today and share with you all. So many people have those typical wooden bar stools from the 80's and 90's and don't know what to do with. I always see them at thrift stores or garage sales and think there are so many cute things you can do with them to repurpose them from just a typical stool that you sit on. You guys know which stools I'm talking about right?? These ones....
Everyone has owned these or know's someone who's owned these in their days. I always scoop them up when I see them on sale at thrift stores. I usually can score them for only $5 at Value Village! A few years ago I was actually on a serious stool repurposing mission! One time I chopped the legs off a stool to make it much shorter, creating a short little handy step stool for my kids bathroom! Another time I repurposed just the legs on a stool and took the circle wood top off to inset planter baskets into the legs and use them as attractive plant stands for my front step. Of course I didn't waste the wood tops on those, I used those to make a turn style caddy for my bathroom toiletries and still use it to this day!
Check out my little slide show brag board below!
So those were some cute little things I've done in the past to reuse old stools. If you have any questions on those projects just shoot me a message in the comments below!
Do you have a small space in a bedroom, or a living room, maybe even a bathroom?? Consider repurposing a stool to make an attractive night table, end table or in a bathroom to put toilet paper or extra towels. Today's post is all about how to turn one of these old stools into a handy dandy small space bed side table for my folks guest bedroom. I recently gave their room a makeover and knew these would be the perfect size and solution for small tables in their narrow bed room.
Alright so lets get to it! Let me show easily
I took it from this....
To this....
First thing I did was sand the entire stool down with 120 grit paper
After I gave it a quick sand, I washed the entire stool down with a good degreaser. I often like to use good ol' Dawn blue dish soap to really clean a piece of furniture, that or TSP which can be found at any hardware store in the paint aisle.
I decided I was going to spray paint this piece. I always like to spray paint stools, chairs, anything with small legs to it. I find painting by hand doesn't always look as nice on these pieces, as often times you can easily miss something on the other side and get drips. It's also so much easier spraying than bending over and trying to reach into all those little odd spots. In this case I already had a couple cans of light blue paint spray paint I wanted to use up and figured this would be the perfect accent colour to use in the guest bedroom I recently redid at my folks house.
I mean just look how cute this space is now...
Cute hey?? I mean couldn't you just picture a couple sweet little pale blue night tables on each side of that cozy bed?? There is hardly any space on both side of the bed too and any typical night tables would not fit properly, so I had to get creative, and that's what has brought me to this blog post today....creative thinking and a challenge, my favourite!!
Oh and before you question the placement of the bed under the window, I did that because I was not in favour of placing it the way it used to be which was like this....
It was up against the wall and was looking off place to the rest of the room. Centering it to this wall would also not work because you couldn't actually walk around the foot of bed to get to the either side without scooting your butt along the side of the wall. The only option I had was to center it under the window. By doing that I gained the symmetry that I long for when redesigning spaces, a focal point with new attractive curtains and a new headboard, and also now the ability to have two new hanging pendant lights from Ikea over top of the new DIY night tables!
Anyhooooo guys wow I'm getting way off track here, ok so getting back to the stool, I decided to use some Beauti Tone paint I had from Home Hardware in the colour River Mist first. I have had that can kicken around for so long and figured this was the perfect opportunity to use it up! If I ran out of that I also had Rustoleum's Serenity Blue spray chalk paint...which I should mention I absolutely loooove and have used this pretty shade on my Kitchen Aid mixer that I chalk painted! Yes you heard that right! I painted an appliance, and not just any appliance, my super expensive Kitchenaid mixer....lol, and before you think I'm crazy, it's still perfect and you can click here if you want to see more on that.
I took my stool outside and applied my spray paint. It was kinda chilly and windy outside that day so I had to pay attention to the wind. Once it settled down I would spray.
I finished it off with the Rustoleum paint. I had to bring it inside to dry for a few hours then gave it a couple good spray coats of Rustoleum's Matte Clear coat spray paint for Chalky surfaces.
I have used this clear coat on a lot of chalk painted surfaces that I want to give a quick finish to. I wouldn't use this on a large piece like a dresser or a larger table, just for small projects. This does however come in a paintable version that you can also use with a brush if you did want to use it to seal a larger chalk painted project.
I let my stool dry inside over night and came back to it the next day with a cool idea I saw on Pinterest from a great blog post where they used the lower bar sections of the stool as extra shelving! Genius right!!? In their case they used some wood to make their shelves. I thought it would be neat idea to add a texture with some jute twine instead!
Here's the blog post I saw from Making Manzanita where they added the wood.
And here's what I did with the twine, scroll through the reel below....
I used a jute cord from Dollarama but here is a link for another version from Amazon if you don't have Dollarama. Also you can find similar twine from hardware stores.
All I did was tightly knot one end of the twine to one of the bar stool wood rungs, then wrap the twine around and across to the opposite rung all while pulling very tight. You don't want any slack, the less the better! So pull as tight as you can while going around and around. It's easy to do! Once I got to the end I just took the end of the twine and knotted it to one of the cross sections of wrapped twine. Then tucked it up and away.
I tried to take a picture of it from the underside for you guys to see of how I finished it off...
I repeated this again for the upper section of wood rungs and then that's it, the new mini shelves were done! No tools required! Surprisingly the twine is very strong too. I thought it might sag a bit, but by really pulling on those sections it helped make these shelves strong enough to even hold a stack of hard cover books!
The last thing I did (and maybe I could have done this as step one but I don't think it really matters) was to cut the legs down a bit to make it my desired height for a bed side table. I decided on a height of 24" for the bed frame my mom bought from Wayfair. Most commercially made bed side tables measure between 24-28" high, so I figured I was safe with this number. I used my mitre saw to chop the legs down, but you could even just use a hand saw for this, even a jig saw, or even a reciprocating saw. I did cut mine straight across cause I didn't want to mess with any angles, angles aren't my strength, lol! Then afterwards I just used my power sander to smooth out any high spots to make it sit as evenly as possible. This table is also going to be sitting on carpet too so I knew it wasn't going to wobble if it wasn't too perfect.
This project took hardly any effort what so ever. The spray paint was so quick and effortless to apply, then all I had to do was wrap the twine around, cut the legs down a bit, and voila a new multi shelf night stand!! The perfect solution to a small or tight space! I will be heading to my folks house in a couple weeks and can't wait to show you guys what it looks like in the bedroom and how well it's going to work in her guest room. Now I just need to find one more stool and make another, lol, because of course we need symmetry!
I did bring it in the guest bedroom here at my house just so you guys could see it looking all cute and styled a couple different ways!
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this easy DIY! I'm already seeing your guys versions on Instagram and I'm loving it! One lady sent me her version she had done with one underneath her water cooler. She painted hers blue too and also added the jute twine shelves, a perfect little spot for her to store extra water cups!! Adorable idea!
*I also get asked a lot about this wallpaper so I will link that here for you guys as well:)
Hope you guys enjoy your evening.
Dale