Your "Basic" Oak Bar Stool Makeover

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Check out these darling bar stools! I think they are anyway. 

I gotta tell ya. When I first found these bar stools, I was so excited & had BIG plans. I brought these plain, solid oak bar stools home & was ready to get to work on them right away. Well then, things started to go wrong, colors weren't looking right. I was going to do a dark stained seat with a vintage design that didn't work out quite the way I was hoping. So, they sat back in a corner for a long time, a couple of years long. 

Then, I decided I'd try to remedy the way they looked & I painted them a different color & tried to redo the seat. I was getting frustrated with the seat part - again. THEN, they sat in my over-filled-with-more-crap-than-my-family-should-bear dining room. Sat in there for "who knows how MANY" months. 

Finally, the answer to their prayers (& mine) came in a message I received on my Facebook selling page (Rustique & Chic) late last year. I just kept reading it over & over....not believing the words my eyes were reading. It was from General Finishes!! If you paint & stain furniture, you might know this name. GF had seen my work on my Facebook page & wanted me to use their product! NO WAY people! They are probably the most used stain for the tops of every kind of piece you can think of on the internet! They make Java Gel, my dream stain! Right about now you should be hearing brakes screeching to a halt. LOL They weren't offering the stain at this time. BUT! They did want me to try two of their paint colors. I was like, what? They make paint? Not just any ol' latex paint. They make Milk Paint. To be honest with you, I had never heard of milk paint until Miss Mustard Seed came out with her own line of it, that comes in a powder that you mix with water. So I went on the General Finishes website to see what it was all about. It's already premixed perfectly for you & comes in some amazing colors. 


I sent them back my response that I would be thrilled to try out their product! Hello! I'm not stupid. Although, I was hoping I could pick out my own colors, but that wasn't the case. I'm taking a chance on getting something I can't work with, but after looking at all their colors, I was confident that wouldn't be a problem.

They sent me a pint of Buttermilk Yellow. I have to admit that I don't use a whole lot of "color" when I paint. I definitely use more neutral colors & occasionally red. I LOVED this shade of yellow though! Very country-ish looking.

I wanted to test out a color combination on something small to begin with, just to see how I liked this color AND the combination. 

This little footstool worked out great for that.

I wanted the top black, since it goes well with yellow, but I didn't want it to give the impression of bumble bee colors, so I distressed the top & then stained over that. I really liked it! I have to say, after using this milk paint, I really like the coverage compared to the cheap Walmart latex paint I'm used to buying. This is smooth & so creamy. A little really goes a long way. 

That's when it hit me to do those darn bar stools for the last time. I was determined to finally be finished with them this time.

And I AM done with them and couldn't be happier. But I don't just paint my furniture. I have to make my stuff into conversation pieces, even if they're just a bar stool. It's what I like to call "simple with a Wow factor." I created a pretty stencil for the seat with my Cameo and now I just adore how these look, & the General Finishes Buttermilk Yellow was the breath of fresh air they needed. I do want to point out that the paint on these bar stool have been stained over using Varethane Walnut Gel Stain, so it has a toned down appearance compared to the foot stool.

And since I liked the stencil design & look of this paint with distressed black so well, I decided to do up a cheese dome with the same theme.

Super. cute.


Until next time ~ be creative! 

**This is a sponsored post by General Finished paint, but the comments & opinions are my own.