Ten years ago, I bought an Ingolf stool from Ikea, for my kid, so he could join our table and have dinner together. The stool was a designed to be used in bars, but it was the perfect fit for our kitchen table for years. The kid grew up, the stool didn’t, so it is no longer needed in our kitchen.

But I love this stool’s shape, so I had to find a way to make it look lovely again. I could not miss the opportunity to put my creativity to work for another Ikea hack. I sanded, I painted, and glued, then painted again. finally, my work is done, and here’s the result!

What You Need for This Project

Painting this piece of furniture was an old plan of mine, but I missed a creative idea to make it real. I actually needed a trigger, and I found it: a pack of napkins bought from the dollar store. They were white and red zig zag striped paper napkins that I totally fell in love with.

I had a few other materials on my list beside the stool and the napkins, as follows:

chalk paint in two colors – white and olive-green
clear varnish
mod podge
scissors,
masking tape

Let’s Start Our Makeover!

Sanding was the first thing to do, in order to clean the stool and make the paint stick better. Beside the need to make the paint stick better, this tool had a small problem: a broken part in the backseat that I had to remove totally.

Then I had to wipe the stool with a piece of cloth drenched in rubbing alcohol, to remove all the dust from sanding.

For coloring, I choose a satin white water based paint, so it would dry quickly and I would get a shiny surface that would be easy to clean after usage. One coat of white paint all over the stool was needed, but the second coat was applied only on legs, since the seat was about to be covered in paper.

A second color of paint comes into play – the Olive Green from Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I used this color as an accent on the backseat (top rail) and the lower part of the legs.

One of my goals for this makeover was to create green “socks” for the legs, but I had to find a way to draw them equally. I used the masking tape to create a straight line around each leg at 4-in high from the ground, then I painted the area below this line.

Covering the seat with a paper napkin was a first time craft for me. I’ve heard about this technique many times before, but never tried it till now. Briefly, you have to apply a coat of mod podge, then place the paper napkin on top, right? How hard could it be? Well, it wasn’t pretty hard: I cut the napkin in the shape of the seat, applied a coat of mod podge and covered the seat with the top layer of the paper napkin.

When the seat dried, I added a pop of green on the edge, to emphasise the new design. Then I covered the seat with a coat of clear varnish to protect the paper napkin and the green edge, since Annie Sloan Chalk Paint requires sealing.

I’m sure it could have been better, but I’m happy with the result even if it’s not perfect.