Vintage Inspired Stool

Staci Marie
by Staci Marie
8 Materials
$20
2 Days
Medium

I LOVE finding vintage treasures and I love old vintage stools. They are all so gorgeous. I've wanted one forever, but I also wanted a stool that I could actually use. I knew a vintage stool wouldn't be my best option for daily use. I shared photos of vintage stools I loved with my hubby and asked him if we could do something similar. He said of course and we headed to Home Depot. 😊

Best wood glue!

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Material List:


  • 2x8x8 board
  • 1x5x6 board
  • Wood Glue
  • Wood Biscuits
  • 1/2" Pocket Screws


Tools Used:


  • Miter Saw
  • Table Saw
  • Jigsaw
  • Kreg Jeg pocket screw tool
  • Router
  • Biscuit joiner
  • Sander or sand paper
  • Drill
  • Nail gun

First we took our 2x8x8 boards and cut the legs and seat boards to length.


NOTE: The measurements we used for our stool are on the photo but you could also make a vintage bench using this same tutorial but with a bench sized seat.

After the boards are cut to length we trimmed the edges to take off the rounded edge and create a flat edge to biscuit them together.


NOTE: You could purchase the boards to be the width you want and skip the biscuit step. We wanted 11 1/2" width legs but all the 2"x12" boards at our Home Depot store were warped, cracked or full of knots. So 2"x8" boards were what we found that would work for the size stool we wanted to make.

After the sides are cut, my husband added the slots for the biscuits.

He used double biscuits to attach the two boards. He did that for both the legs and the seat.


We put wood glue in the biscuit slots and then clamped the boards together. We did that on both legs and the seat.


We left the boards in the clamps overnight and picked up on our project the next afternoon.

Since we will be using this stool every day in our master closet, we wanted to make sure it held up to a lot of use over the years. So for that reason my hubby wanted to also add pocket screws to keep the seat together. He used the Kreg Jeg and 2 1/2" screws.


Note: He said we did not need to use both the screws and biscuits, but he is a big 6'3" guy and wanted to make sure it held up for many many years to come.

After taking the boards from the clamps he sanded them down.

Once they were sanded we decided on the cutout style I wanted for the legs. The vintage stool I fell in love with had a simple triangle cut out so my husband used a jigsaw to cut it out.

We also knew we wanted to inset our legs. So, hubby routered a 1/4" space so the whole leg would fit inside.

Once again, we decided to enforce our legs by adding pocket screws to the legs and screwing them into the bottom of the seat.

This is how the stool looks when the legs are attached. You could stop here, but the vintage stool I was inspired by had a skirt across the front and back of the stool and I wanted to add that element into our stool.

We used a 1"x5" board. We chose to fully go across the seat so we cut the board at 24 3/4" and then cut the corners down at a 39° angle. We added a little glue and then nailed the skirt to the front and back of the stool.

Here is a side view. As you can see we inset the skirt slightly. That is a personal preference.

Here is the full view....isn't it beautiful?!


I haven't decided how I want to finish this stool yet, but I'm envisioning vintage chippy goodness! 😊


If you want to see how I use or style all my DIY projects please follow me on Instagram!

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4 of 24 comments
  • Kyralee Kyralee on Feb 25, 2022

    I just love an old bench or a new one or any one! I have one that my cousin made for me out of wood from out great-grandparents barn. It is my most special bench!

  • Kyralee Kyralee on Feb 25, 2022

    Stacie Marie, the construction of my little heirloom bench is almost identical to the one you made. That's what reminded me of it! The only difference is an added cross piece near the bottom between the two legs. I have a lot of little benches. You might call me an addict!

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