Rescue a Thrifted Barstool {DIY}

I’ve been a little absent lately…but for good reason! I am putting the finishing touches on my basement craft room – a place where I can be creative while the kids are sleeping. I have a whole pile of projects to share, but I haven’t quite gotten around to writing the posts. So, please forgive me.

No one goes to a yard sale saying, “Hum, I could really use a flesh-colored barstool.” Except me. This hideously-colored metal beast called to from me from a pile of junk last weekend after a Storage Wars wannabe sold all items of value from his locker gambles and then put out the rest at a yard sale. I have never seen such junk. Ever. But through the piles of dirty clothes and broken tools, I saw this beauty:

It looked 10X worse in person, I promise. You can’t even see how ugly the color is in the photos.

I had been looking for a high stool for my craft table and realized this stool would work just fine with a little TLC. I told my husband there was no way I was paying more than $2 for the chair, and luckily the seller wanted to get rid of this ugly chair as much as I wanted to rescue it – bid accepted.

1. When I got home, I wiped the chair down with Clorox wipes (twice) to get through the multiple layers of funk coating the legs.

2. I removed the seat which was in surprisingly good shape (besides the unfortunate flesh-toned vinyl that covered it). I then coated the rest of the barstool in Rust-oleum Lemon Grass which has a really nice, yellow citron color to it.

3. Using a tank top that Little Guy had stained with his food-covered baby hands, I cut off the back of the shirt, stretched it across the existing seat, and used a staple gun to attach it. I cut off the extra material and the seat was done.

4. I screwed the seat back onto the freshly-painted stool and my new, fab citron-and-gray stool was born: