Farmhouse Stool: Rust-Oleum $10 Thrift Store Challenge

This post is sponsored by Rust-Oleum and is part of the $10 Thrift Store Blogger Challenge. As always, all opinions, writing, photographs, editing, and thoughts are 100% my own. Pinky swear.

I love a good challenge. Especially when it involves a thrift store. Bring. It. On!

So, I was really excited when Rust-Oleum invited me to participate in the $10 Thrift Store Blogger Challenge! Here are the rules:

(1) Bloggers go to a thrift store, flea market, or garage sale and buy one item for no more than $10.

(2) Make over the item using Rust-Oleum products.

(3) Blog about the transformation and how we went from the “before” to the “after.”

I found this stool at my favorite thrift store, Second Life Thrift in Avondale Estates, GA.

It was exactly $9.99. Perfect!

I knew exactly what I wanted it for: our guest bathroom! We needed a spot to stack towels for guests or to give a leg up (literally and figuratively) for our smaller guests at the sink.

But I didn’t like the beige legs and dark-stained top. It needed a makeover. And given my love of the farmhouse, rustic style, I wanted to give it a farmhouse-style makeover. I wanted it to have a came-out-of-an-old-barn, been-sittin’-in-the-rain, maybe-used-to-milk-cows, many-years-old look.

Materials Used:

Rust-Oleum Stain in Weathered Gray and Kona;

Varathane Stain in Vintage Aqua and Antique White;

Varathane Triple-Thick Polyurethane in Satin Finish (to protect it, since it was going in the bathroom);

Orbital sander;

80-grit sandpaper discs for sander;

Rags to wipe down stool after sanding and to apply stain;

Latex or rubber gloves to wear while staining;

Mask and safety glasses to wear while sanding;

Felt pads for legs of stool (optional).

How I Transformed the Stool:

I made a little video of the process from the “before” to the “after,” so you could see how it looked after each coat of stain. Take a look (it’s less than a minute, I promise!):

When I sanded the stool, I left some of the beige paint on the legs, for two reasons. First, to be honest, it was hard to get that paint coating off the inside of the legs with the electric sander. Second, though, I liked having some of the old paint there as part of its wear and patina. I had to use 80-grit sandpaper discs to remove the paint finish from the legs.

I applied about four coats, total, of each color of stain, rubbing it in and then rubbing it off quickly, to get the weathered look. The Vintage Aqua stain is a bright and saturated color, so I used that sparingly, just to give it a hint of color in the finish.

To get the look you want, just play with the stain colors. Remember that, the longer you leave it on before wiping it off, the deeper the color.

And here is the finished stool in our guest bath: