How to make your own farmhouse style wooden stool with an antique patina by using paint and stain in this DIY stool idea.
Most of the fun in decorating for me comes from trying to find interesting pieces that give our home character. I guess that’s why I love vintage and antique pieces so much because they are usually worn in such a perfect way and have a great patina.
One of the things that I’m drawn to is the look of these old fashioned farmhouse milking stools. They are great for adding height to your vignettes and character to your space. My dad gave me this one…
It has a patina you only get from layers and layers of paint and real use and I love using it in different rooms in our home for everyday decorating and for holidays.
So when I saw a fellow blogger on Pinterest post a project where she made one from a kitchen stool I thought, oh my gosh, what a great idea! Fast forward to a garage sale this summer where I saw this stool for $5 and I knew I had the perfect project for it with my own spin on it, of course. 🙂
Start by deciding how high you want the stool to be then mark on the stool where you want to cut it. We chose just above the bottom rung and we marked it with a sharpie.
Hubby started out by using the handsaw to cut the leg off but it was hard to hold so he went with the Sawzall instead. It was much quicker. A handsaw will definitely work, you’ll just need to clamp the stool really well.
Either saw will leave the cut a bit rough so you’ll need to sand it down. I used the palm sander for this. Truth be told, it’s hard to get it completely flat and even but I have a solution for that.
This picture is not the greatest because it looks like it’s not flat, but it is. 🙂 I just wanted you to be able to see the color and height before the paint goes on.
How to get the antiqued patina on your diy footstool.
I wanted to create a look of layered paint over time so the plan was to do just that, layer the paint. I started with a light, sporadic coat of white spray paint.
And then gave it a coat of black spray paint.
After I took this picture, I gave it a bit more black paint as I wanted that to be more prevalent. Once the paint dries thoroughly, you can start sanding. If you do this too soon, the paint will gunk up in the sander. Yes, gunk is a word, LOL.
On a side note, aren’t these chicken rain boots great?? I love them. You can find them on Amazon. 🙂
Wipe down the stool to remove all of the dust. Now it’s time to apply the stain. I chose my go to Early American by Minwax. Wow, can you tell how much I’ve used this stain??
Almost done with this DIY wooden footstool…
You can see here how the stain brings out the wood underneath and also highlights the black paint.
So this simple DIY project came out as I had hoped. It’s not exactly like the inspiration but I’m ok with that because it’s still one of a kind.
The beauty is, you can do this with any color paint. Imagine how pretty this would be with green spray paint or red for Christmas! (hmm, another project in my future perhaps? :))
How do you add character to your space? I hope you’re inspired to make your own DIY stool or maybe this project inspired you for another project you thought of while visiting. I truly appreciate you stopping by!
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