It’s not always easy to find affordable furniture. High-quality yet stylish pieces can be expensive, making the combination hard to come by when you’re working with a tight budget. So turning to DIYs when you can’t find what you’re searching for is a cost-effective method that almost always ensures satisfaction when executed correctly.
One person who instantly springs to mind when we think of amazing DIY projects is Drew Michael Scott (A.K.A Lone Fox). He’s always posting nifty DIY videos, seeing the potential in ordinary household items and transforming them into chic pieces.
Most recently, Drew posted a video where he revamps a mundane IKEA stool into a rustic-style, French-inspired piece of furniture. Inspired by an expensive design he saw online, Drew undertook some simple steps to give the stool an entirely new look that’s filled with character and textural interest.
We’ve put together a step-by-step of Drew’s DIY process, proving that it couldn’t be easier to create your dream designs using a lick of paint and a few yards of rope.
Prep the stool
When attempting DIY furniture, always opt for inexpensive items in case of disaster. In Drew’s case, he heads to IKEA as there are plenty of affordable styles that feel expensive. He finds a stool that’s a similar shape to the piece he was initially inspired by.
The first step is to remove the legs so you can work on the top of the stool separately and set it aside to dry once you have painted it. Before painting, Drew preps the stool with a base layer. ‘You mix up water with a little bit of fabric softener in a spray bottle, this is going to be your blending solution.’ He says to ‘spray this down’ before starting on the painting.
Paint the seat
To make his paint he explains, ‘I’m going to go ahead and use my leather painting technique which is basically where you mix household paint with equal parts of fabric softener, you mix it up together and it creates this nice coating.’ The softener makes the paint easier to apply to the fabric seat.
Cleverly, Drew acknowledges the importance of shading to make the stool look authentically old and rustic. ‘I also created a darker shade that way I can do a little bit of shading,’ he adds.
Once you’ve created your desired color, ‘Start painting on a coat of this nice and thick. I also went in on the edges and started adding some of the dark paint and blended it out with an additional brush.’
(Image credit: Courtesy of Drew Michael Scott)
Wrap the legs with rope
‘Now we’re going to work on the legs,’ he says. Going in with the rope, Drew explains, ‘I got this at the craft store, It’s just a basic rope. This is a little bit of a softener kind of rope which was nicer to work with.’ It’s entirely up to you what type of rope you use as it depends on your desired look, so don’t be afraid to opt for a varying thickness or different shades.
Drew covers the legs in glue and then goes in with his rope, saying ‘I wrapped the legs using hot glue (specifically Gorilla hot glue sticks) just to make sure it was nice and sturdy. Then I screwed the legs on once I wrapped them up.’
Add your finishing touches
Here comes the fun part – the finishing touches.
‘To finish off the stool, I added one more coat of darker paint that I mixed up with the fabric softener and just sponged it on.’ Remember to add the darker layer once the first layer has dried so they don’t mix. The darker paint will make the stool look old, and add some aged character, imitating leather.
The great thing about this piece is that it will age well. You want your furniture to be both practical and pretty, making the stool a perfect living room furniture piece that ‘you can sit on over and over again and it’ll just get softer with time.’
Drew’s proven to us once again that DIY is sometimes the best option if you’re looking to cut back on costs and create a piece that’s uniquely yours.
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