The Last Word on Seating

If you have been following our blog, you know we have already written at great lengths about the office seats (Moving Chairs posted October 1, 2013) and theatre seats (Now Showing: Kitchen Seating 2 posted October 9, 2013) in our kitchen. So, what else could we possibly have to say about kitchen seating?

Well, we’ve not mentioned the most important seats of all… the barstools.

In our search to find the perfect barstool for our kitchen, John and I developed the following criteria:
– Modern
– Fun / Interesting
– Streamlined to fit our narrow space (without arms, and not bulky)
– Color and material that stands out against our walnut panel
– Comfortable, of course
– and priced within our budget

We found lots of stools we didn’t like:
-uncomfortable
-poorly made
-too cumbersome
-too sleek

We finally found a stool at Bo Concept that we did like. We both appreciated its minimalist design, clean lines, and straightforward expression of its 3 components: seat, tapered legs, foot ring.

Although our 4-legged friend remains to be convinced, I liked the stool’s 3-legged wobble-free structure (the secret of the tripod’s success).

John (having grown up on a dairy farm in England) found the 3-legged stool interesting because it resembles a milking stool.

The Bo Concept stool met all of our criteria, except one — the wooden legs did not stand out against our walnut panel; they sort of blended in.

We didn’t want stools that were “matchy-matchy” with our kitchen finishes — we wanted stools that added something new to the space.

Unwavering in our quest, we came up with an idea for customizing the stools so that they would satisfy all our criteria… we would paint the legs.

A custom paint solution gave me an opportunity to pick another Benjamin Moore paint color for our home (which I love doing).

I selected a grey/blue color called Atmospheric. I have been looking for an opportunity to introduce this color into the kitchen color scheme since being inspired by the fridge in our basement (Inspired Color posted May 6, 2013).

And for John, it was a perfect opportunity to transform a portion of our garage into a temporary painting booth (which apparently he loved doing)…

and a perfect opportunity to don a painting costume.

The custom painting process was well thought out with hooks and wire hangers for easy spraying and drying.

After three coats and plenty of drying time, John assembled the stools.

And we were very happy with their addition to the kitchen.

So much so, that we felt it necessary to inaugurate the stools with a celebratory cocktail — and I had just the one in mind.

Recently while sitting on a barstool (a four-legged one, I think) at Commerce in the West Village, I ordered a specialty cocktail named “The Last Word.” When I complimented the bartender on the drink, he was very kind to let us check out the key ingredients.

So I was quite confident that I could recreate this drink at home. The recipe is equal measures of these four liquids (don’t overlook the fresh lime juice)…