A Little Stool

I LOVE freecycle. If you don't know it, it's a network of people giving (and getting) things for free. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to pick up this stool from a lovely lady who told me 'It's sturdy, but ugly'.

Sure, it was dirty, the fabric had seen better days, and the veneer was chipped all over. But you can see the potential right? The body of the piece was easier than I expected - I found a paint scraper in Danny's tool box and removed any remaining veneer. It needed A LOT of sanding, and then two coats of white paint.

When I started pulling apart the seat, I found layers and layers of fabric, most notably this...

 
That's right - some glow yellow fleece - I guess some thrifty person thought it would be good padding??? I replaced all these layers with some wadding to pad the seat, (I ended up using two layers to make sure it was comfy) and searched for just the right fabric, finding this navy and white that I hoped would look perfect. And here is the after...

Probably the most difficult part for me was turning the corners on the seat cushion. I put some spray glue between the old fabric and my padding, just to make sure it didn't slide around, and then started playing around with the fabric. I started off by tacking across the corners, thinking that a gathered corner would look ok. It really didn't. So I went with hospital corners. Literally. You can see what I did in this photo...

It was a lot of pulling and checking to make sure the top was smooth. I stapled one long side at a time, then the two ends, before tackling the corners. And voila!

I'm a novice when it comes to home decorating. I've only become really interested in how my home looks recently - I always thought it seemed too hard. But with this piece it suddenly dawned on me how my main bedroom could look. The fabric is blue (I know it looks black in the picture, still working on my photography skills!), and I think I'd like to add more blue accents to the room. Sounds simple, but this is a bit of a first for me - how about you? Do you find pieces of furniture can inspire a room design, no matter how small the piece?

Thank you for stopping by!

I'm sharing at Make Grow & Thrift, Not Just a Housewife and Primitive & Proper.