#white stool

Across the country temperatures have been outrageous this past week.  I don't know, maybe with age I'm getting soft, but I just couldn't bring myself to work outside, so I did a little project in my workshop in the nice, cool basement. Start with a small oak stool - boring!

So I primed and painted with some Behr primer and paint leftover from the back porch remodel.

I've noticed that numbering things is all the rage lately, so I thought I'd give it a try.  I don't have stenciling supplies, so using Word (you know - the computer program), I wrote out "No. 173" and went through all the fonts until I found one that looked kinda old world-y.  Then I realized I didn't have any carbon paper.  So I used some painter's tape to tape my printed number to the stool and traced the outline of the numbers onto the paint.  I just used a pen and pressed down hard enough to leave an imprint but not too hard so as not to push through the paper.  Then I very carefully painted in the numbers using black satin finish paint left over from some long-forgotten project.

Then, using my tools of ignorance - 

I began my favorite part of this kind of project - distressing!!

I used a Minwax stain pen in Mahogany to lend some grime to the distressed parts, then sanded over those parts so it didn't look "painted in." After that dried I put a quick wipe on, wipe off coat of Minwax "Ipswich Pine" stain to give the whole thing a bit of a patina and tone down some of that bright white.

The final step was to put some satin polyurethane on the seat, just because it's right next to the sink and the shower.  I liked the way the numbers have a worn through look to them, although you can't really see that in the pictures.