It was so quick, you probably missed it... but yes, you caught a picture of our new (completely homemade) stool yesterday when we revealed the entry way.
It's here! It's finally completed!
It took months of sitting (no pun intended) before we finally finished our new stool! Completely made from scratch, it's surprisingly comfy and cute. I love it.
I started with some left over wood that I cut down to size (18" long to be exact). I knew that I wanted two tufts so I measured in 6" on either side and marked with an "X". I did the same on the other side - so that I would know whether the hole was straight or not - and went to drilling.
Close enough to the "X" to call it a day!
Oh and also I knew that it would be pretty forgiving so yes, close enough would be good enough.
I attached the Waddell Leg Plates, picked up at Home Depot, and the 4" foam picked up at JoAnn's. At the same time, I was also cutting the finishing trim - the legs were pre-bought.
Huynh was nice enough to trim down the foam to size - with a bread knife nonetheless. But then... I am not kidding when I say that this sat in the garage for months.
So fastforward to a week ago...
When Huynh was working on the longhorn, he also stained the legs and trim which finally gave me the jump start I needed to finish this stool. Well that and a completely free weekend - how often do one of those come around?
I covered the stool with a very, very thick batting - so thick that I am beginning to think that it actually wasn't batting - but it worked out well since we were able to make the top square and clean before putting the fabric on.
Since I work best sitting in front of the TV watching old How I Met Your Mother reruns, this was obviously done in the living room. The corners took some time - the perfectionist in me wanted them exactly the same but I finally caved when they were close enough to the same that they looked okay.
Quick rewind - I had planned on doing this before Huynh's birthday... in September. So this material has been sitting in my closet since then. Nice, huh.
I digress. The fabric is from Hobby Lobby which I picked to coordinate with our breakfast nook chairs. We actually don't have much yellow in the house so any bit is welcome.
The buttons were picked up from JoAnn's and were super easy to make. If you are planning on doing the same, I would heed the instructions to use a pencil eraser to make the fabric stick in the prongs. Makes all the difference.
For the tufts, Huynh fashioned a "needle" out of a wooden chop stick and threaded the twine up through the hole in the bottom and out the top. Since the "needle" was so long, it was much easier to find the hole going back out the bottom. I then pushed in the button as hard and far into the foam as I could while he tied off the bottom to a washer to keep it all in place. Confused? Maybe the next pictures will help.
So, it's not perfectly square. I'm hoping that works itself out over time.
The bottom however? Not so pretty.
Now's a good time to really explain more of what all went down.
After the batting and fabric were all stapled into place and the tufts created - see the washers? Huynh tied those together so that they would lay flat but they aren't going anywhere. The trim I picked was too thin for us and our limited tools to properly screw through so Huynh stapled the corners together - since, no weight will actually be on this part as it is strictly for appearances - we aren't too worried about it going anywhere. He then screwed in a spare piece of wood to the bottom of the stool, which you see unstained, and then screwed straight into the trim pieces into the ends of that brace.
It's definitely not going anywhere.
The legs are square now, but we were afraid that over time, they might not be square anymore so we added the bottom cross brace for added support. Finally we added felt pads to the bottoms of the feet to protect our wood floors from getting scratched.
Of course it was supposed to fit under the entry way table to help cover the outlet but in a stroke of bad luck, it is about 2" too tall. Onto the next one...
Plan B: we shifted the umbrella holder to next to the door so the stool took it's place next to the entry way table. What a nice place to sit and take your shoes off. Or even to slide over to the dining room table for an extra seat.
The entry way is looking more and more completed! With Bevo, the table, umbrella holder, and of course our seasonal UT tree, the stool looks right at home. I love it.
We are on our way to Ft. Worth today to celebrate Christmas with the family. Have a good food and family filled weekend, y'all! Merry Christmas!
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