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From Waste To Good Taste - Upcycled bar stool 🌼

Updated: Jul 24, 2020

Hello everyone! 🌼

What a week it has been! For me here in Leicester, we are back in lockdown and the weather hasn't let up long enough to do half of the things I wanted this week. Never the less it has given me time to look back over old projects and finally make blog posts about them!


In this post I will be covering one of my best furniture restorations and I'm so excited to share it with you - A bar stool!


As always I really hope you like this post, don't be afraid to leave a comment or a like, you can find me on Instagram, all my links will be at the bottom of the post, and don't forget to stay smiling! 🌼



🌼 Let's begin 🌼


As you can see this chair needed a lot of love and time to get it to a good standard. I bought this a long time ago from a local charity shop and it was covered in a white/cream dirty looking paint, it had bits that were chipped off, bits that were caked in paint, runs down the legs, it was going to be hard but I had a plan for it!


For this DIY you will need:


🌼 A chair

🌼 Gloves

🌼 Sandpaper (Or sander)

🌼 Patients

🌼 Paint of your choice

🌼 Wood stain of your choice

🌼 A soft cloth

🌼 Paint brushes

🌼 Wood filler

🌼 Masking tape


This DIY is one that took me a long time because it is so hard to sand all the bars and little fiddly areas that had been splattered with paint. So to start off, sanding. I wanted to get all that paint off ready for what I wanted to do next!


Once I had it all sanded back I decided to masking tape off parts of the design that I wanted to be painted. Now I originally hadn't intended on using paint but some of the white would not shift no matter how much I sanded! So painting was going to happen.


I of course had never used any kind of wood stain before and being me asked my mum what I needed and how to do it. She gave me this 'Fine Paste Wax' in the colour 'Pinewood' and at first I wasn't sure. I do love this light wood but it was honestly so white it wouldn't match my room at all, I wanted it to have some warmth to it.


So I took an old tea-towel, wrapped it round the end of my finger, dipped very lightly into the wax. Honestly any soft cloth will do, I just like using old tea-towels instead of buying new materials.


When I say I lightly used this product I mean very lightly, you do not want lumps of this all over your project because it will leave darker patches of stain. Then rubbed it in, really ensuring it was rubbed well into the wood, but I didn't go over it too much as this then lifts it back off.


A great thing about using a wax stain is that the wax is actually sealing and protecting the wood whilst staining, and I have to be honest, I love the way this stain turned out. It really brought warmth back to the piece.


I then grabbed a pot of paint from my stash, this one is called 'Jaded Teal' it's a lovely colour, it is always worth testing some first on paper to get a true representation of the colour as this one does dry darker.


This is only emulsion so if you are going to be using this chair a lot I would suggest buffing with a clear wax after on top of the paint just to avoid any flaking, but mine is just going to stand in my room with a few books on so I haven't added any wax other than the stain.


I also am only painting a few details into my chair not covering the whole thing so I don't have to worry so much about it getting scratched or scraped.


Its worth noting here that I had completely forgot to fill the splits in my wood before I stained or painted, I actually made it a lot harder for myself having to masking tape off my cracks to make sure I wouldn't get wood filler all over my stain or paint so definitely would recommend when you've finished sanding, to add your filler and then give it a last little sand and wipe down.



As you can see here there were a fair few splits in my wood, but I had an idea! Already the chair is looking so good with just being stained and painted! As you can see on the bars they did need a couple of coats, but under this there was still a lot of paint and you can see the difference in colour when its wet, dry, in sunshine and shade.


We were very fortunate to actually get a sunny day here so painting in the sun was so nice for a change.


Now we are almost done I'm down to my final finishing touches, covering those white little cracks, now I know why didn't I paint them teal? Because I wanted to use something really striking close up but really delicate and subtle so I decided on - Gold!!


I used some gold furniture paint I've had lying around and gently went over any cracks, white wood filler and even a couple of my own cracks I decided to add for extra depth! This chair was an absolute labour of love of mine, I am not someone who likes painting furniture, I definitely have a lot more patients with sanding than painting, but I couldn't resist turning this old flaky bar stool type chair into something more modern, warm and actually more sturdy.


And here's the finished product! 🌼



This was honestly one of my first real attempts at transforming a piece and I love how it turned out. The little rivers of gold just helped to make the blue pop and covered those nasty cracks.


Thank you all so much for your support, a comment, like, even a read means so much to me! I hope you loved this diy as much as I did, if you decide to recreate yours the same tag me over on Instagram @thefoxsfern I'd love to see what you come up with!


I hope you all have a lovely evening and a bright weekend,


Feel free to leave a comment, like or reach me on social media!


🌼 Stay smiling









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