My picker has been finding some fun things for me lately including this old school chair and stool.

These two pieces have a few things in common.  They both have blonde colored wooden seats.  They both have unattractively colored metal legs.  And they were both in pretty rough shape.

So I knew right from the start that I would paint both of them entirely, including the metal legs.

I started with the stool first.  I sanded the wooden seat and then cleaned everything with some TSP substitute.  It looked like this stool may have been in someone’s workshop, and I just wasn’t sure if there were any oily residues on it that might resist paint.  I like to use a grease cutting cleaner in these cases rather than my normal plain ol’ water.

Next I pulled out The Gulf from Dixie Belle Paint Co.

Isn’t that just the most delicious aqua?

I painted the entire stool, legs and all, in The Gulf.

Once dry, I added another snippet from the IOD Label Ephemera transfer to the seat.

By the way, in case you are keeping track, so far I have used this one transfer on 7 pieces (the medicine cabinet, the folding chair, a painted pumpkin, a wooden box, a mirrored box, a recipe box, and now this stool).  The funny thing is that I mishandled the transfer when I first took it out of the tube and ended up ruining a section at the top (it stuck to itself), so I could have gotten even a couple more projects out of it if I hadn’t done that.  I still have a couple of small pieces left too.

Once the transfer was applied, I used clear wax over the entire stool.

Next up is the school chair.  I had some Chalked spray paint in Charcoal left after painting the table I shared a couple of weeks ago, so I started by using that on the legs.  I thought it would work well paired with Dixie Belle’s Sawmill Gravy on the wooden parts, but after getting one coat of the Sawmill Gravy on I really didn’t like the two toned look.  So I pulled the spray paint back out and painted over the Sawmill Gravy.

Then, I was stumped.  The chair was a perfectly blank canvas with the solid dark grey color on it.  I debated adding a grain sack stripe and stencil (like I did on this one), I also considered painting a union jack on the seat (maybe in grey and mustard like I did on this school desk), but that is a lot of work and I didn’t think this chair was worth the effort.  I even went through all of my re.design with prima transfers looking for one that would be perfect on the chair, but I didn’t think any of them were quite right.

Finally I went through my stash of stencils and came across my notice of decommission stencil from Maison de Stencils.  You may remember that I used it last October to create a sign …

The stencil was the perfect size for the chair.  I masked off the border on the design, since I was placing part of it on the chair back and part on the seat.

I love the way it turned out.

I used Dixie Belle’s Putty to do the stenciling.  Once it was dry, I sanded over everything to give it a worn appearance.

Then I used clear wax to finish.

So, what do you think of my upgraded seats?

I took both of them in to Reclaiming Beautiful this week, so if any of you locals are interested you should head to Stillwater and check them out!

I also brought in the notice of decommission sign because I never managed to get it there last year.  You’ll also find some of my painted pumpkins at the shop …

And my Farm Life cupboard door signs …

And the mirrored box …

And the boxes …

And the camp stool …

In other words, a whole bunch of stuff!