Moderate Makeover - Home Edition

I did a little make over on a stool this weekend. I really enjoyed it and feel like I am a real blogger now because I can offer a before and after! Hooray for me.

Anyway, I found this stool at my local Salvation Army charity shop. It had some dubious stains which the man in the shop assured me I could just scrub out. Y'alright love. I also have to admit that even though the stool was priced at £8 I only paid £6. I haggled a charity shop. I am going to hell, but honestly I only had £6 on me in cash.

I had big plans to re-cover and paint this baby, so I popped to Ikea (yeah popped, it's like fifteen minutes away in Manchester) as I really like their graphic-y textiles.

I picked up a metre of this cool stuff that has hand drawn planks of wood on it for about £5. I was thinking about painting the rest of the stool white, but seriously, we can not have any more white things in our house, so I decided on dark grey and went home via B&Q. I grabbed a tester of Crown Flat Matt Emulsion in Herringbone. FYI that tiny 125ml tester pot covered two coats on my stool and also two coats on a mirror frame I'll show another day. Pretty good value for £3.25.

When I got home I unscrewed the top, cushiony part of the stool and laid it on the floor (stapling can be violent). Then I simply stapled the fabric tightly over it, leaving the old fabric in place. 

The corners were probably the trickiest bit, but they were still do-able. I sort of pulled them up and folded them under themselves, like I was wrapping a present (worst. description. ever).

And there you go, one re-upholstered stool seat. 

Next up for some make-over action was the base. It's made out of some kind of mock, MDF, plastic nastiness so I decided to prime it with some Dulux Ultra Grip primer before painting. Then I just applied two thin and even coats of my Crown emulsion paint and left it to dry for four hours. 

Et voila, once screwed back together again it's looking pretty slick if I do say so myself.

Clearly being snowed in makes me far more proactive than usual.