Refinished Step Stool

I was on a roll last week with all of the furniture refinishing between the rocking chair and the side tables. The final item in the “little things” refinishing queue was this step stool I had purchased in May. It was unfinished, a blank canvas, nice and tall for reaching the bathroom sink.

I love the look of staircases with dark stained treads and white risers. I would love to do that to our stairs someday with a nice runner going down the center (for the safety of all dogs, kids and clumsy adults). Since anything like that is a long way away, I thought it would be fun do that to the step stool for the bathroom. I started by staining the steps with the bombay mahogany polystain, two coats with drying time in between.

Once the stain had set, the next day I painted the base of the step stool with bright white enamel in a semi-gloss, two coats. I should have primed it, but I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to lug the giant tub of primer outside. I decided to just do 3 coats of enamel if necessary, but it wasn’t - two coats covered it just fine without primer.

I’m really happy with how this came out, it looks nothing like the original yellow pine it was before!