Years ago, needing something quickly, we bought an inexpensive footstool at a local big box store. It served its immediate purpose but stylistically.....it was less than ideal. When it began to show signs of age, we decided to pause just a little in our production of items for sale to make something just for us. Thus we have the oak footstool, finished in a color that matches some of the furniture in our home, decorated with walnut intarsia and legs, which match the other wood also already in our home.

We planed and resawed the white oak and biscuit mitered the corners to form the case. We stained it with two different shades to get it to match our Mission style oak chairs, and created a matching bottom of birch plywood, which was then lined with faux leather for extra cushion. We did a black walnut glue-up to form the legs, and then cut and shaped them to match those on our Mission style chairs, and these we attached to the underside cleats with a series of metal brackets. The flora that make up the walnut intarsia were cut and stylized from the beautiful leftover pieces of walnut we had when we shaped the bottom of the walnut base for our "live edge stained glass lamp". These were cut out with a bandsaw and then hand rasped and sanded. The design was created to match that of the upholstery fabric we selected to cover the top cushion. Now we have a footstool that matches the style of our room and also provides us a little extra storage to boot.

The dimensions on the box, including the 2" thick cushion on the overhanging lid, are approximately 20" x 20" wide, and 10" tall. The inset walnut legs bring the total height of the footstool to about 15".