Pinterest Project: Kitchen Stools - Win

I don't know about you but I could spend forever on Pinterest searching for inspiration. Some of the things I pin are just things I think are beautiful but would never, ever work in my house. You know, because my whole house would fit in the inspiration home's bathroom. Somethings can only be sized down so far. 

Of course, I do love any project that just calls for a little paint. I've had this stool project pinned for quite awhile.

We had a couple of generic wooden stools purchased from Target back in 2001 when we first bought our house. They're a staple and I'm pretty sure they still carry them. 

I dutifully followed the steps in the tutorial the Pin linked to and using red to match our new color scheme set to spray painting the base coat on stools. I started with the legs and then sprayed the tops.

I didn't spray the bottom of the seats because only the pets are really going to be low enough on the ground to ever see them.

I chose to use Valspar Premium Finish which I picked up at Lowes. This one had primer built in and covered very nicely. I didn't end up with any drips either. 

Here they are drying in the sun. We're not used to consistent temperatures in the 90's here in the Seattle area and as you can see our grass has not fared well. 

Totally non-related photo of Lily hanging out watching me work.

Once the red had dried. I proceed to the next step which instructed me to wrap the stools in Kraft paper to protect from over-spray when doing the top. I didn't have any Kraft paper, so I used wrapping paper. It worked just fine. I sprayed the tops silver and left them to dry for an hour or so. I then chose to spray them with a clear coat to make the finish a bit tougher. I let them dry again for another hour.

I flipped the stool over and placed it on the clean side of cardboard. Again following instructions, I taped off the legs with painters tape.

I used more cardboard to construct a paint shield for the legs and after cutting a few holes slid it on. I used painters tape on a couple of the holes because I had cut them too big.

I sprayed the silver legs with clear coat and then I left them to dry overnight this time. Mostly because it was getting late and the light wasn't really very good for pictures. 

In the morning, I unwrapped my stools and removed the cardboard paint shields. The stools didn't come out completely perfect.

As you can see below, I lost a little bit of paint around the edges of the top where they had rested while flipped.

Also, despite trying to be very careful, the cardboard scratched a bit when it was pulled off the legs.

Overall, I'm quite happy with them though and I'm okay with a few imperfections. I love having the color and how they pop against the white wall and wood floors now. 

I would call this one a Pinterest Win.