My Favorite Stepstool

One of my missions this year is to take some of the basic, boring hardworking things in my home and either replace them or turn them into pieces that are classic, beautiful, and make me smile.

It sounds silly, but I have to look at these things every single day and it’s a lot more fun to use things that are pretty, right?! I’ve been slowly working on replacing things like our measuring cups and spoons, and even our dog bowls so that they’re a little prettier to look at and a little more fun to use.

One of the first things I’m on a mission to fix is our step stool situation.

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We have a three-year-old who is fiercely independent and who uses the phrase “I do it!” approximately 735 times a day. I’m all about promoting that independence and working towards getting him to be able to do more things on his own, so I’m constantly looking for little tweaks we can make around the house to make things more accessible for him.

One of the simplest (and most functional) solutions is to use a step stool for things that he can’t easily reach. He regularly uses the stools in our kitchen to access the sink when he needs to wash his hands (or when he gets a wild hair and decides to give his toys a bath…) but we didn’t really have a good solution for the bathrooms other than lifting him up and holding him while he washed his hands. Not only is that wildly annoying for us, it really doesn’t give him a lot of freedom to learn how to do it on his own.

We were at IKEA recently picking up some new shelves for the workshop (more on that soon!) when we walked past a big display of their BEKVAM stools (you can buy it on Amazon if you aren’t close to an IKEA!) and I told Corey to grab one for the house. In all honesty, I kind of want to go back and get a few more – I’d love one for the upstairs bathroom and one for my closet too!

Basically, I need a step stool in every room.

That’s normal, right?!

I actually really love the look of the step stool as it is, but it doesn’t really go with our house very well, so I figured I’d pretty it up a little. The whole point of this was to add more function to my home in a way that looks nice and makes me smile, right?!

This was an incredibly simple makeover. All you need is some paint, some stain, and some painters tape – I prefer the green stuff because I have way better luck with it not bleeding. I taped off at an arbitrary point about 2/3 of the way up from the bottom of the stool and I stained the bottom part of the stool with this stain. I love that it’s a rich, dark color but doesn’t really have any red or yellowish undertones – it’s just a pure, beautiful brown. Then, I painted the top part with some leftover paint from my bathroom renovation and called it a day.

It’s that easy.

I did go ahead and use my paint sprayer to spray a layer of polycrylic on top of the whole thing – it gets a lot of use, so I wanted to be sure it was nice and protected.

I’m pretty thrilled with how it turned out, and it makes me really happy to know that we have one more functional and pretty solution happening in our home now. I’ve actually got a whole post planned about some of the hardworking basics in my home that I’m planning to switch out for prettier versions because I’m that dedicated to the cause!

What have you been making over in your home lately?