This summer I’ve been trying to make an effort to go through things that have been stored upstairs in the carriage house for too long.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t made much headway.  Somehow there’s always something more fun to do.

However, I did manage to drag this set of three bar stools down the stairs and into my workshop a few weeks back.

I don’t remember exactly when I purchased these, except that it was before I was retired.  So … yeah … at least 4 years ago.  I seriously considered putting them at the curb with a free sign on them.  But then I thought, no, just bite the bullet and paint them.

I originally planned to paint them black, and then add a Swiss cross to the seats like the stool I painted a few weeks back.  To that end, after cleaning them up, I gave them each a coat of Rust-Oleum’s spray black primer.  I even got so far as to paint the first chair in Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.

But I just didn’t love how the stool looked in black.  Then a little voice in my head said ‘hey, why not try out one of the new Dixie Belle Silk All-In-One paint colors instead?’

I picked Truffle because it’s a lovely, rich neutral.

The Silk line of paint has a built in primer and top coat, so technically I didn’t need to prime these bar stools.  But it was already done, and I’m not mad about it.  These stools had that shiny factory finish look to them, so a little extra primer just made it that much easier for the Silk paint to stick.

Each chair got two coats of the Truffle.

Then, inspiration struck.  I saw a post on Iron Orchid Design’s Instagram showing a set of cutting boards that were painted by Jonathon Marc Mendes.  If you haven’t ever seen his work, you should check out his Instagram account,  I really admire his style.

You might be wondering how a trio of cutting boards could inspire a set of barstools.

But it was the way he used the I.O.D. Gregory’s Catalogue paint inlay that caught my eye.  He just used parts of it rather than using the entire design.  And I happened to have that particular paint inlay on hand, so I thought why not try this look on the barstool seats.

So that’s what I did.

FYI, the paint inlay worked perfectly with the Silk paint (which is an acrylic paint).  One tip I’ve read is to not wait too long to remove the inlay’s paper backing.  Unlike chalk paint, acrylic paint is not reactivated with water and may not release the paper backing of the paint inlay as easily if left too long.  After applying the inlay into wet paint, I let it dry for about 30 minutes before wetting the paper back down and peeling off the backing (for full paint inlay instructions, head to this post).

After spraying the seats of the chairs with Rust-Oleum matte spray sealer to keep the inlay from smearing, I then sanded the edges of the chairs to distress them.

Finally, I decided I wanted to add just a little more depth to the Truffle color with dark wax.  So I blended some of Dixie Belle’s Brown wax with some of their Big Mama’s Butta.  The addition of the Butta helps the wax go on more evenly, and makes it easier to blend.  It also mellows the look of the brown wax a bit.

Here’s a look at the difference between a stool with the wax (on left), and one without (on right).

So even though the Silk paint doesn’t require a top coat, you absolutely can add one for aesthetic reasons like I’ve done here.  That brown wax really added some depth to the Truffle paint.

I realize that the look of the partial typography on each stool is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s pretty fun.

What do you think?

This trio of bar stools is for sale locally, so check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page for more info if interested.

Thank you to Dixie Belle for providing their products used in today’s makeover.