A bench earns its stripes

What began as a two-tone country dining bench is now a chic entryway seat and storage area. This bench was originally forest green and natural stained (it was part of the dining set my parents had when I was growing up!). I cut down the legs and painted it black about 4 years ago to use as our coffee table. We wanted something long and narrow and this fit the bill. Plus, it was free, so that made it even better! After finally buying a coffee table, I decided to use this as an entryway bench. It did the job, but was pretty boring. I have been wanting to spruce up the entryway into our condo, so I decided to paint some white stripes on this old bench. I love stripes and knew they would be perfect here to make this narrow space appear a little wider. It was so easy and I could not believe how much better it looks after the addition of a little white paint.

You can use any paint that you would use on the walls inside your house, but semi-gloss is best because it is durable and easy to clean. I actually already had this paint. It is a little off-white, which I thought might not look great originally, but now I am so glad it wasn’t too white. This color looks more natural.

It was 48” long, so I decided to make 6 stripes that were 8” each. Next time, I would do an odd number of stripes so that I could begin and end with the same color. I put pencil marks at 8” intervals. Then I used painter’s tape to make the straight lines. I had to remember which color was going where, and since I was painting the white stripes, I had to make sure they were the right width. It looks like the stripes are two different widths, but that is just because of the width of the tape.

I made sure the tape was firmly in place before painting two coats of the white. After the second coat had dried for about 20 minutes, I removed the tape, and let it dry completely. Ta-da!