One of the main things I noticed as the house was being done was that the closets all are super tall. Both girls (and the baby) can’t reach the top shirt rack of their closets. So I looked into finding step stools for them all. The main thing was that it had to be pretty tall. Alexa could do a shorter one, but Maren and the baby’s closet will be tall for them for a while. Plus they both will need one for their bathrooms.

The best and cheapest one I found by far was Ikea. Of course Kansas City doesn’t have an Ikea anywhere around (although we are getting one in 2014!), however, they do deliver. I was pretty shocked, because the items they are willing to ship are slim pickings. I also picked the natural wood ones so I could do whatever I wanted with them. These are the final step stools I decided on:
Click here for a link to the stool.

I’ve bought other unfinished items from them and they are perfect to stain or paint. I knew they would come without varnish on them.

I started searching around the internet and found tons of people have done Ikea hacks on this stool. The one I really loved was this one:
Click here to see the website with this stool.

It came like this:

I went through and laid out all of the parts and grabbed the ones I wanted painted verses the ones I was going to stain.

I kept hesitating to bring them in because I didn’t want to move them while they were wet or bring in the paint smell into the house, so of course I pushed my luck and it started raining. Jay had to run out with an umbrella through our muddy back yard and grab them for me. Luckily I was able to dry them and no damage was done.

Next I had to stain the steps:

Then I assembled and added the felt to the bottom to avoid scratching.

And finally done! I am still trying to decide on whether or not to polyurethane the tops or leave natural.

The girls loved their new stools. Now I need two more, one for downstairs and one for the baby’s room.