Fabric Covered Kitchen Island Stools

Last week I tested out one of those 'middle of the night ideas' that come to me. My eyes will open at oh, I don't know, 1 am, with some totally random idea for the house - and then I get so pumped about it that I can't fall asleep for a good hour. It's both very cool and very annoying. It also means that I have no idea if it's going to be a total bust or total success until the VERY end. Good thing I never spend a lot of money on most of these things, or I'd be in trouble! And these days, pretty much all of these wacky ideas revolve around the kitchen. Which I cross my heart will be completed one of these days! I thought we were really making some progress this weekend, when we finally got the compound miter saw from my brother, bought the molding, were all set to go, then realized cutting crown molding - or should I say cutting and MATCHING crown molding around cabinets ain't easy. My bro needs his saw back in a couple weeks though, so sometime in the not too distant future we'll finish those stinkin' cabinets! Wow, I can go off subject, can't I?!

Back to this issue at hand: our kitchen island stools. They had those wicker tops before:

Which were fine and all - but the wicker was starting to wear, and I eventually want to get a much darker (butcher block) island top, and the light wicker wouldn't look too awesome with it. I thought if there was a way to inexpensively alter these in a fun way, let's go for it! I thought it might be fun to play some red in these guys, and thought it would look cool against the aqua island. Cover with fabric perhaps? Yes, let's try it! So here's how the 1 am idea became reality:

I picked up one of those foam cushiony things from JoAnn's -

It's a bit bigger than the stool, so I cut to size -

Then I turned the island upside down and took a good look.

I decided to grab some foam board that I had bought like a year ago for something and never used it -

I thought this would be a good material to staple the fabric into. I cut a piece to fit the underneath, and got 4 nails to hammer into those angled pieces -

Then I flipped the stool over, and draped a piece of fabric over the top -

I'm not sure how much - but I think you'd need about 3/4 of a yard. I flipped it over again, and started stapling away.

And just keep stapling and stapling away. The corners are kinda tricky, but you can maneuver the fabric to make it work. I kinda pulled/bunched it/stapled it -

Now, it's not the prettiest underneath, but really, who's going to come over and flip my stools upside down?!

When you're all done stapling the poor thing to death, flip it over, and you have a MUCH softer, cushion-y fabric covered stool!

Now, I should also add that they have passed the 'kid test.' I made these a week ago, and the kids have climbed up, climbed down, climbed up, climbed down about a gazillionty times and they're still holding up! I was a little concerned about that, but if they can withstand these crazy monkeys doing that all day long, they can withstand anything!

Now, I've got to run...still naptime here and I just had a wacky 1 am idea last night that I'm dying to try;)



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