You may have seen the reel I shared on Instagram about this project, but I wanted to also share more about it here on the blog to give you a closer look and to provide more in depth information so that you too can create this look if you are wanting to. If you have furniture that is previously painted and you would like to change the look of it, then today I’m going to show you how to achieve a Rich Mahogany/Coffee brown finish that will enhance your furniture, just like I have done here with these bar stools in our kitchen.
This is how our kitchen bar stools looked like previously. I actually liked the look of them. I bought that tropical fabric when I was in Hawaii years ago and thought it look great on the stools. But now that I’ve just wallpapered our kitchen and painted the bar area blue, the fabric felt like it was competing with the wallpaper and just looked out of place.
So the first thing I did was remove the seats from the stools and recovered them in THIS awesome blue and white fabric. This fabric is Sunbrella, which is an indoor/outdoor fabric making it perfect for a bar stool because it will clean up nicely when it gets dirty.
As you can see by this next picture that I had shared on Instagram, this isn’t the first time that I have reupholstered these chairs. In fact this is the 5th time! I shared a blog post about how to Upholster stools HERE in THIS POST.
So after I was finished reupholstering the bar stools, I liked it, but I wanted to change them up even more and so I decided to make them a rich brown color… here’s how I did it.
I first spray painted the stools in this Chocolate brown color from Ace Hardware. I don’t know that I have used this spray paint before, but I really liked it. (It cost way less then the bigger brands too) And because I am a rewards shopper at Ace I get coupons in the mail all the time. I just wanted to mention that in case you didn’t already know. Even though I used this spray paint, it really doesn’t matter what brand you use. You just want a nice coat of brown to cover up your previous color. This will act as your base color. I used one can of spray paint per stool.
Once the spray paint was dry, I brought my stools back indoors….only because it might have rained that day. I would have preferred to also stain them outdoors.
So the next step is to add stain over the fully dried spray painted furniture. This is where the magic Happens! I used a dark stain by Minwax named, Ebony. Any dark stain color will work great. I’ve used the colors Coffee, Aged Oak, and Walnut and have liked them as well. I have also used a Gel Stain for this step and it too works great. I used this Ebony because it’s what I had on hand but I was happy with the results.
Using a rag, I dipped the rag into the stain and wiped onto the stool. I let the stain sit for a minute and then I wiped it off. If I were using a gel stain I would have just left it on and not wiped off.
I also wore rubber gloves to protect my hands and a respiratory mask because stain always gives me a headache and because I was also having to do this step indoors, I find the mask to really help a lot.
Look at this next picture. The stool on the left is Spray Paint only, and the stool on the right is with the stain. Can you see how the stain added such a richness that you just can’t achieve with spray paint alone? It really makes such a difference.
Now stain takes a lot longer to dry than paint. I would leave it to cure for at least 48 hours. The longer the better here. Once my stools were fully cured I attached the seats back on to them with screws.
I’m happy with how they turned out. I think the rich brown makes the stools look more expensive than how they looked when they were painted white.
The stove mount in our kitchen is also a dark brown and so the stools now match that wood and tie the room together better. This stove mount had been painted soo many times, and last year I stripped it down and gel stained it to this color. See more about the stove mount HERE.
This also isn’t the first time I’ve done this paint and stain method. I first tried it out on this bamboo coffee table in our living room. This method just looks so great on wood, bamboo, cane, and wicker furniture. I actually plan to share it on more wicker soon. So if you have some old wicker lying around, this is a perfect way to spruce it up. I also want to test out lighter spray-paint and stain combinations to share with you because I know not everyone loves the darker brown as much as I do. So let me know if you would be interested in that as well.
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Thanks for stopping by,
Emily
