The worst project ever

This seriously was the worst.project.ever.

At least Dan proclaimed that it was. But the end result was so worth it.

First, I need to give a little background. My Dad owns a ranch and when he bought it from the previous owner, everything stayed in the old ranch house. So my dad had the task of going through all the stuff and deciding what was junk, what could be sold to the antique shops, and what he wanted to keep. Once he sifted through everything and had it down to the main stuff that wasn't junk, he was kind enough to ask us (my mom and all us kids) if there was anything that we wanted.

And this little beauty was among the things that I chose.

Ok, so it wasn't really a beauty....yet, but I could see some real potential.

And the best part is the steps can swing in the stool so it looks like.... this:

Now, tell me that is not cool. I mean, I would have LOVED to have a stool like this when I was a kid.

But as you can see, it was not in the greatest shape. It is quite old after all.


A close-up of it's condition. If you look closely, someone even painted carrots in the two corners.

Now, I know you are thinking that the stool doesn't seem that big so it couldn't have been that bad. Why did we proclaim it to be the worst project EVER? Well, I should have remembered from this summer when we refinished our table and chairs, that anything that has round legs is just, well, it just stinks. Dan says that after sanding those blasted chairs this summer, he will never refinish chairs again. Next time we are just buying new ones. It's just not worth it.

Well, this time I thought I was being smart. I told him that we were not going through the hassle of sanding. We were going to strip the paint. I had just stripped something prior to starting this project and LOVED it. It was so fun. If you have never stripped something, you really should.

Anyway, so we started stripping. But quickly realized that it was going to take FOREVER to scrape the 20 layers of paint. I kid you not. There were SO many layers of paint. And I don't know if it was because the paint was 50 years old or what, but it was a pain. Nowhere near as pleasant as my first stripping experience.

So we scraped and scraped and scraped. And scraped some more. Did I mention we scraped? Well we did. We literally scraped for days. We had to take turns because we would get so burned out. I really thought I would never see the end of this project.

And I have to be quite honest. Dan did more scraping than me. There is something to say for men and their elbow grease. They really can just do a better job at things like this. I would scrape forever and still not do even half as much as Dan could. He was just better at it. And well, I was ok with it. :)

So once we finally had the 20th layer of paint off. It was on to the painting. I debated over what colors to use. I just couldn't decide. Should the colors match my kitchen, the bathroom, did it have to match anything? I just couldn't decide.

And this is what I ended up with:

It took Alayna all of thirty seconds to declare this stool as hers.

And why not? She already knows how to put the steps up...

and down.

So, what do you think? Not to shabby for the worst project ever, huh?