Tuesday, September 8, 2015

{t}Werkin' with what you've got

Happy Tuesday! 
Well, I'm sure I caught your attention with the title of this post and the fact that I'm blogging again! Yup, it's true! Thanks to everyone that has encouraged me to start blogging again, it really does mean the world to me. 

Sorry to disappoint you, but there will not be any twerking going on today, but we will be talking about WORKING with what you've got.


I bought these black stools from Target when we first moved into our home almost 8 years ago. I bought them for the kitchen island.


They're not hideous, but I was just kind of tired of them. I didn't want to replace them with something new because 1. we didn't really need new stools and 2. I still liked the shape of them. 
I realized what was bothering me most about the stools was the dark color and lack of character.

I decided that I would strip them using this  paint stripper and pray that the wood underneath were all matching pieces.  I've loved the look of these dip-dyed Serena and Lily stools and was hoping to achieve a similar look. 

Although the stripping gel claimed to be safe indoors, I still took this project outdoors. I laid down some plastic and gloved up. 


After spreading a generous amount of Citri-Strip on the stool and waiting the amount of time suggested, I used a puddy knife to scrape off the paint.


Below is what the stools looked like after a few hours of some serious elbow grease. Bad?  No, but still not the look I was going for.

I ended up doing the above process one more time and lightly sanded each stool and was much happier with the look.



There are some spots that the paint didn't come off, (upper right hand corner) but I don't mind it.  It adds character which the stools were lacking before. Also, two of the inner pieces of wood (bottom left) were different types of wood than the rest of the stool. The bottom left piece ended up getting painted, so that wasn't a big deal. The other one was a longer center piece that didn't get painted and it is noticeably a different color, but again it doesn't bug me.

I taped off the legs and painted the bottom portion using white paint I already had.

Then I gave them a couple coats of  Minwax Polyurethane,  except the "dipped" painted part.


And…here's how they turned out!


I'm in love with how they turned out!  And the best part is…I werked (wink) with what I had.




Have a great week! It's a short one!

xoxo,

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