DIY Upcycled Stool | The Craftables

A few years ago, I bought this cute little foldable table on a whim. I didn’t have an exact purpose for it, in mind. So, it ended up being used as a combination of a stand, a foot stool and stool to sit on. It’s just the right size and turned out to be a quite a useful purchase. However, off late it had started looking a little shabby on the top, as the wood had started to dull out. Which meant there were two options. One, buy a new one. Or two, upcycle our trusty sidekick! Obviously, I went with option number 2!

I didn’t want to do much to the base of the stool, because I like the simple design. So, I focused on the areas that needed to be spruced up. Here’s how we upcycled the stool!

Budget: low

Time: 60-90 minutes

Materials:

Folding Table / stool.
Leftover wrapping paper with a bold print
Black paper
Scissors
Cutter
Ruler
Double sided tape / adhesive

Steps:

1. Clean the stool properly so that there is no dust and the top to be covered is smooth and measure the length and width of the top.
2. Cut a portion of the wrapping paper, which has the print clearly visible. This needs to be the size of the top of the table exactly.
3. Measure each slat of the stool.
4. Draw the strips of the measured slats on the paper cut out .
5. Cut each strip once you have drawn it on the picture . Keep in mind, that there will be some part of the paper leftover. As we took the space between the stool slats into account earlier and won’t be needing it now.

6. Place the strips as per the design in the picture on the slats and make any adjustments necessary to the dimensions of the strips.
7. Stick the double sided tape on one slat or apply adhesive to one slat. Make sure, it’s end to end and no portion of the slat remains without glue.
8. Now, paste the strips one slat at a time so that you follow the design exactly. This is where double sided tape becomes a good option. As, you have a couple of minutes to take the strip off and paste the right one, if there are any errors.

With these steps, the top of the stool was ready. However, the stool was looking a bit incomplete. So, we took one of the colors from the print (black) and added strips of the same to the two side slats of the stool.

Using the same steps, we measured the slats and cut out 2 strips of paper, in the same dimensions. To finish up, we pasted the strips on the two slats.

TA DA! The upcycled stool is now ready! 🙂

Things to keep in mind:

Take a very bold print for the paper. So, that the pattern shows perfectly through the slats.
The dimensions of the strips is really important. If they’re slightly bigger than the slats, that’s ok. But, make sure they aren’t smaller than the slats.
If bits of the paper are sticking out or you want the paper to look a part of the wood. Then, you should use mod podge as an adhesive instead of double sided tape. Add layers of glue above and below the paper to paste it well. You should also add a layer of varnish on top to make the paper stick better.