I showed this sad once-upon-a-time was a piano stool piece for my January projects. It took me almost the entire month to finish it, with other things in between of course but still it took much more time than anticipated.
After thoroughly sanding the wood and cleaning the metal from rust, I treated the metal parts with a black anti aging and anti rust metal paint.
The wood was first treated with 3 layers of sanding sealer and then sanded again to give a nice smooth surface. Then I painted 3 sides of each leg black and the top sides white, creating a sharp edge between the black and the white turned out to be a challenge as I could not tape it off due to the shape of the legs but eventually I got it.
To create the black stripes I tried several things, creating a stencil pattern did not work out as the surface is not flat. Also stamps or simply trying to draw straight striped did not work out either. Of course my first thought was tape but the thought of cutting a gazillion thin tapes and then putting them off was scaring me. Mum came with the great idea to stick the wide painters tape to a piece of plastic coated paper and put it through the shredder. In a short time I had enough evenly cut tapes.
Peeling them each off the paper and applying them to the legs took a while.
The scary part was painting over the tapes with black. You might think why I did not paint the legs entirely black and then painted with white. Making the stripes white on a black surface would have need more layers of paint on the tape, and pulling those neatly off would have had a bad outcome as everything would have cracked because of the many layers of white, so this was although not obvious the best way.
Wile holding my breath I started to peel of each tape one by one. I read somewhere that it was best to not let the paint dry entirely or the paint would chip. I read somewhere else that if you applied the tape from left to right you had to remove the tape from right to left (the opposite) for a cleaner removal. Yes I had investigated a lot before starting to get the best result.
After holding my breath for a bit more over an hour (yes I did breath in between the stripes :)), I had lovely black and white stripes.
And loads of little tapes everywhere...
Some stripes needed a little retouching by hand and brush but most turned out great. On top of the paint I applied a mat varnish to seal and protect the paint work.
After cutting the embroidery round, then accordingly a round piece of wood and foam it was time to sew the top. With black and white striped piping to match the pretty legs.
Tadaaaaa! The result! I am very happy how this turned out, it was worth all the effort and its old look is long forgotten.
The embroidery is vintage, a lovely kitsch fluffy embroidery with birds and flowers, very soft to the touch.
The beautiful piano stool / ottoman / pouf is available at
StarHomeStudio.
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