Footstool Story, Part I

Has been looking for a footstool for DH's home office for a while. I wanted something like this with nice detailed legs, or this, or this. Even straight legs will do. One thing I knew for sure is absolutely no round one for me! DH waited patiently for a long time, but not long enough for me to hunt one. My plan was to buy a really cheap one with great bones from thrift store or yardsale, then refinish it myself. Since I couldn't find the right one, and DH is threatening me that he is going to buy one from a furniture store (you know they sell them really expensively, and they are not what I had in mind), I had to act fast. I found this broken gliding footstool at S. Army a while back for $5. Yeah, I paid $5 for a broken footstool. Well, I actually was buying a pair of chairs for $65, the guy won't give me a deal and cut that $5 off, so I talked him into giving me this $5 broken footstool for free. Will show you the chairs transformation in the future, since I haven't found the right fabric for them. Come back to my footstool story. Forgot to take a picture of the original picture until I had already removed the fabric and foam. So had to put them back on for the photoshot. That little table underneath was a curb find, love the base, but hate the top, so it stayed in the basement all this time.

Here is what the footstool looked like after removing the dirty ugly fabric and the foam. You can clearly see the broken top, which was made of particle board. Eek!

I took the top off the little table, saving the base for a future project (for little caterpillar).

Then I took out my jigsaw, which hasn't seen any action for the past 4 years. Let me tell you, it's not very easy to cut through a 3/4" plywood with a jigsaw. It took me a while, but I did it. It didn't have to be perfect, since the edge will be covered by new fabric.

Then lots of staples later, it looked like this! Much better!

I didn't paint the base, since it's very similar to DH's desk. The fabric is not my first choice, but it was from my stash, so it's free. The original foam was in great shape, so I reused it. Total cost, $5. Here is a before and after picture.

I am not 100% satisfied with it, but it will do for now. It fits under DH's desk perfectly, and now he can put his feet up comfortably while reading papers, don't have to worry about the little pillow falling off the top the metal trash can, a.k.a. his old footstool.

I have a plan to replace DH's office desk to a more classic one, and get rid of the current particle board cheap one (bought 5 years ago for less than $200 from Staples). Then I can pair this footstool with the glider chair from the nursery (which has not been used much). I will probably paint them white or dark brown, since they are slightly different tone. But that's in the future. As soon as I finish the slipcover for the sectional sofa (a project I started two years ago, and stopped halfway), I will use the left over fabric (heavy white upholstery fabric) to make a prettier cover for it, and maybe for the glider as well, just like this one from CentsationalGirl. And CG also has a great tutorial on how to transform 'junk' bench to pretty girly teaparty bench. I used the same technique, minus the pompom trim step, won't be appropriate for DH.