Black Stained Vintage Stool Makeover

Today, for your viewing enjoyment, I’m sharing a black stained vintage stool makeover.

I’m definitely throwing around the word vintage pretty loosely.

I’ve read that anything older than 20 years can be considered vintage. Anything at least 50 years old is true vintage. An item has to be 100 years old to be an antique.

All this tells me is 50 is the new 20.

Who makes up these rules?

Not this vintage person.

We had a sturdy stool with a great profile sitting in our garage. It was left here by the seller.

If I had a nickel for every time I said an item I’d made over in the last year was “left here by the seller” I’d be able to pay off our mortgage.

Wouldn’t that be grand?

Hold on…let me dream about that for a hot minute.

Okay. Back to reality.

This stool was likely used in a child’s room or bathroom. My powers of deductions are strong, my friends.

I had no plans for how to makeover this stool when I started.

Honestly, I just needed to keep my hands busy with a creative project.

The only thing I knew for sure…are you ready for this harsh truth?

It was imperative that I sand off that cute little animal with the surprised expression on its face.

It had to go.

I was going to sand down the entire stool, but it had some nooks and crannies on the base that seemed like they were going to give me trouble.

I don’t need anymore trouble. I wanted to keep my hands busy, but not TOO busy.

It also occurred to me that the color blue is a common theme in my home decorating.

If I left the base of the stool alone, it would actually fit in my house.

Contrary to what every teacher I ever had said, sometimes being lazy works out for me.

I tried using a brown-toned stain on the top of the stool, but it looked too cutesy country. I just sanded a cutesy animal off the stool, so you know I was running hard and fast away from that label.

I was starting to regret not having a makeover plan in place.

It’s okay. I could fix this.

Next, I slapped on (my technical lingo is on point) some black stain leftover from our kitchen cabinet makeover. That gave the stool more of a ‘little bit country, a little bit rock n’roll’ vibe.

I could live with that.

However, compared to the dinged up base of the stool, the top was a little too perfect now. I decided to undo all that perfection by lightly sanding around the edges.

The trick is to sand away just enough of the finish so that you don’t feel bad when your kids actually ding and scrape the heck out of the stool when they use it. That’s the honest truth right there.

When I first took my sander to this stool, I was convinced I was going to come up with a revolutionary way to makeover the stool. It would be so fresh! So trendy!

Yeah. About that.

All the ideas I conjured up while I was sanding away just seemed too much.

The truth is I’m a-okay with simplicity. The stool as it now looks adds another layer of texture and interest to my pantry/laundry room.

So here’s to the easy breezy makeovers!

They seem to bring me just as much happiness as the big, arduous ones.

Funny how that works.

If you’ve done an easy breezy makeover lately, I’d love to hear about it! Here are some other posts you might enjoy.

Geometric Design with Stain on a Step Stool (how to keep the stain from bleeding)

$9.60 Round Dining Table Makeover 

Rope-Wrapped Planter

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