Only One Hour To Spray Paint A Bar Stool And Recover the Seat

I’ve talked about painting furniture with spray paint before. There are pieces of furniture that spray paint will cover well and you will never know the piece was not brush painted. Bar stools and chairs are good examples of this. And they are much easier to spray paint than brush paint.

Trying to use a paint brush on spindle legs, backs, and cane seat pieces is a pain. I usually have to go over chairs three times to be sure I cover all of the twists and turns. Painting them is time-consuming, too. I can spray paint a chair or bar stool in five minutes and be done.

The bar stool I painted this week sits in our kitchen area near the cook stove. It is a nice place for the granddaughter or anyone else to sit and talk with the cook.

I decided to paint the bamboo bar stool to freshen it up a bit. When I bought the bar stool, I recovered the seat, and that was it. I used fabric from an old shower curtain. I looked back at the post and realized that was in 2016. I thought it was maybe three year ago.

 

A few years later, I recovered the seat again with a cloth napkin from Tuesday Morning. I fell in love with the pattern. Now, it is time to paint it for this makeover. The hubby and I learned after the first seat recovery that it was not necessary to remove the seat frame from the legs.

But I forgot. I remembered there was something weird about removing the seat about halfway through taking it off this time.

All I had to do to remove the seat was to turn the bar stool upside down and hammer the seat out from the bottom. Soooo….I put the screws I removed back in the seat base. Glad I only removed a few.

I found the blue, green and white fabric in my stash. It used to be a shower curtain too. I guess I go through a lot of shower curtains. But in my defense, I usually buy them at thrift stores or clearance sales so they aren’t expensive. As you can see, I reuse or recycle fabric!

Now to the spray painting. I thought I wanted the chair to be turquoise so I sprayed it with Rustoleum Spray Paint, aqua, that matched the fabric really well. I had this color on my paint shelf and I like it.

But not for the bar stool in our kitchen. It just looked too bold.

So I broke down and went and bought more spray paint. I hate to do that when I have a lot of paint on my shelves. The green apple color Rustoleum spray paint I bought matches the fabric really well. I love this color. Back years ago I painted all kinds of furniture apple green. I need to get a can of latex paint this color.

I really like the Rustoleum brand too. It sprays on so smoothly and gives such a nice finish.

I wasn’t even going to distress the paint but the JTS said something about seeing the blue paint under the green paint so it was on! But, the distressing is very light.

With the painting done I moved on to recovering the seat. This is so easy yall. The most dramatic furniture makeovers you can do is a chair, stool, bench, or anything with a fabric seat. Paint the piece and cover the seat with new fabric and the transformation is amazing.

I was just going to remove the last fabric cover but I ended up removing the original fabric cover too. So the only thing I had left after removing past seat covers was the foam and the back board for the seat.

I have a great tutorial on recovering a chair seat here. You should start with one side and staple the fabric, then move to the opposite side and staple the fabric down. Then do the other two sides and the corners.

Pull the fabric taut while stapling and then trim the excess fabric when finished.

At that point, all I had to do was pop the seat back into the seat base. I spray painted the bar stool, and while the paint was drying, I recovered the seat. This project was finished in one hour!

I used this same shower curtain fabric on two metal chairs I spray painted blue.

In the photo above, you can see the bar stool against the wall facing the cook stove. My oldest granddaughter enjoys sitting on the stool and talking to me while I cook. I love that!

I thought I might use the stool at the end of the bar instead of the top backless stools, but instead, I decided to paint one of the stools the same green apple color and sell the other backless bar stool.

Full disclosure, lol. Nothing staged here for photos. You can see the mopping stuff on the counter along with my coffee cup and the iron I used to iron the fabric for the seat. 

The two stools at the end of the bar area have always taken up too much space.

Now there is only one. What do yall think of the bar stool makeovers? Do you like the color? The fabric?

Leave a note if you have time and thanks for being here, Kathy