Since my last post about the dining chair, I’m sure everyone has been hanging on the edge of their seats wondering, “Will the stool fall apart when the clamps are taken off?” or “How will she ever fix that ridge in the center of that seat?” No fear! I am here to answer all your questions and lead you through the final stages of this project!

The clamps came off, and the stool was a sturdy piece of furniture. There was a ridge down the center from the different sized planes of wood… but with the help of a small chisel, I carved away the wood to a nice new smooth seat. I even got rid of the large holes in the seat by gluing in the old back supports as fillers (above right.)

Using a small pull saw, I cut the supports off flush with the surface leaving and a hole free seat! Once I took care of all the stool’s imperfections, it was time for a new finish. Since the stool was constructed out of a nice hard wood, I decided to use milk paint to add color to the piece.

Milk paint works best on hardwood that is totally free of old finishes or any wax or oil. You can find it easily online, and it usually comes in a powder form that you mix with water to make the paint (image above left.) Milk paint often takes several coats to get a nice saturated color. You can see my first coat in different stages of drying in the image above and to the right. If you look closely, you can see how some of the wood still shows through the paint. This can give your piece of furniture a nice antique look, but for this piece I wanted to get the paint as opaque as possible.

I painted two coats of milk paint on the stool and let them dry completely (image above left.) When the paint was dry, the blue turned out to be very pastel. In order to deepen the color, I decided to finish the piece with some homemade wood wax. The wax is made from beeswax, carnauba wax, coconut oil, and vodka, and always gives wood and milk paint a nice deep color and soft finish. Initially I painted around the rim of the seat, but I felt that the color was uneven and decided to sand off that paint.

After rubbing in the wood wax, the stool had great shimmering blue legs with a little of the wood showing through highlighting their form. I can’t wait to pull this little ’squatting’ stool out the next time I’m tight on seating or feel like whittling on my back porch! Check back soon to see how I finish building a new shelf from those old drawers….