Garden Stools

Years ago my mom found a painted ceramic garden stool similar to this one (but with a little more decorative painting) to use as a side table for one of the chairs in our family room.

She doesn't consider herself much of a decorator, but she must have been ahead of her time because lately I have seem them popping up everywhere.  Here at Ballard Designs, here at Pottery Barn, here as featured in House Beautiful and now in my guest bedroom.

You will notice that the price tag on these lovelies ranges from "out of this world" expensive to "super" expensive to "reasonable, but still more than I, strike that, Carolina husband is willing to pay for an accent table" expensive.  

So how did this end up as added to our guest room? 

A trip to T.J. Maxx and some white spray paint.   Sitting in the clearance section it was marked down to $18 (yes $18 compared to $150, $550, or $3,500).  Now it was probably only on clearance because of its pretty horrible silver paint job, but I knew it was nothing that a can of spray paint and a few minutes in the back yard on a warm day wouldn't fix. 

A few light coats of paint later we have a new side table for the bedroom.  It's a little low for the bed, but I think I can work with it.  If not white will go anywhere, so no worries.