Spring has sprung... on my barstools

Can you smell it in the air?  Some of you can, I bet!  The rest of you just have allergies.  Oh, bless you.

I'm talking about spring! It has definitely sprung here.  As I type this on my patio, I keep finding myself gazing at the most beautiful thing on our whole street - our rose bush.  I think it's actually two that have merged, plus a little bonus one that has sprung up - it's definitely trying to take over the yard.  I might just let it.

Anywho, on to crafting.  Which not-so-ironically involves flowers.

I'm extremely confident I'm not alone when I say I spend many hours a week in my kitchen.  Cooking.  Washing pots and pans.  Mopping.  Unloading the dishwasher.  It gets a little lonely.

I decided to invest in barstools... to fill out the kitchen PLUS have an inviting place for company or Stephen to sit and keep me company while I finish a few chores.  I looked online for days at different stools, only to come to the conclusion I didn't want to pay for any of them.  Plus, I don't want to spend a ton of $ furnishing this house when we will probably only own it for two years.

But used furniture is always awesome!  Especially if it is wood - so many possibilities! But I was impatient, and not many options were appearing in my small town.  Until these came up, three for $45.  I found them on Walmart.com for $89, so they were a pretty good deal.

Except they were boring.  And the dark brown fabric was really just too dark and formal for my bright and cheery kitchen.  I forgot to take a picture of them there, but they were depressing.

The good news is, the seat cushions detach easily - just unscrew four little screws on the underside... this is post-recovering so that's why the fabric looks strange here.

I unfortunately don't have pictures of the process, but it's pretty simple.  After detaching the seat cushions, I headed to Walmart and scored some lighter fabric for just under $2.50/yard!  I bought two yards, which ended up being enough for four seat cushions - which was perfect, because I definitely needed an extra one for practice.  If I had thought about it, I would have picked up fabric medium for my paints... but I forgot.

Acrylic paints are so cheap, and I have so many on hand - score!  After cutting up my fabric so it would fit around the seat cushions, I painted on the fabric, although next time I would probable attach my fabric first (it would be easier to center the painting that way).  But here they are attached back to the stools.

I just freehanded all of it with a craft brush, it was really easy.  After painting it, I sprayed it with some clear spray paint to "protect" the paint from chipping and also to "firm up" the fabric, so that when I stretched it over the seats it wouldn't pull in an odd way.  I'm not sure if it did anything though.

To attach, I just used a staple gun on the underside, and constantly pulled on all directions to keep it taut.  SUPER easy, SUPER cheap, and SUPER quick.

Aren't they cute?!

My kitchen looks way better now, and bar stools were definitely worth the $50 total investment.  We use these all the time!  And the paint has held up perfectly.

So much better than the original covers.  Amazing what such a small difference a couple shades lighter on the seat cushions can make!

Is spring inspiring you to do any spring-themed projects like we have?

Happy crafting!

posted by Emma