Belly up to the bar!

It’s been six months since our beadboard bar makeover and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the results!  It’s held up really well to a fair amount of abuse, but we felt like it was missing something:

….can you guess what it is?

Yup, we *finally* purchased barstools to go with our, ahem….BAR!  Nobody ever said we were quick to the punch here at Tell’er All About It!  Actually, it just took us a long time to agree on a style that we liked and we are uber stoked with these.  We like that the lines are simple and uncluttered and as much as we both wanted to have a “back” on our barstool, what we’ve found is that these are very easy to slide in and out of without much heaving and ho-ing which just encourages people to belly up even more.  And since they are fairly small, they tuck underneath the bar when not in use, which frees up our very limited floorspace for more important tasks like throwing toys around with Maggie and the occasional cleaning job (sadly, perhaps a little too occasional).  Also, we can safely say that we’ve had one get-together already and they proved to be very popular!  Alas, there was a problem…

…the color of the corbel (which is an orangey-red) totally clashes with the espresso tone of the barstools (which matches all of the other wood tones in our family room area to a tee!).  Annoying!  Well, annoying if you are Dr. J and I (and, believe it or not, he actually brought it up first before I had the chance!  Love that guy!).  Well, it’s nothing a little paint can’t fix!

Basically we primed the corbels (pronounced COR-bulls if you’re curious) in a white primer and then painted them the same color as our baseboards and our beadboard (Valspar’s DuJour in Semi-gloss)!  Now nothing clashes and it makes for a much more classy and chic after effect.  Here is the less clashy and more streamlined after:

It’s amazing what a little paint can do!  The thing we like most about this is that now the corbels don’t stick out like sore thumbs like they used to.  But you can bet your bottom dollar that Dr. J and I were kicking ourselves for being such doofuses to not paint these back when we updated the bar to begin with.  Le sigh.  What’re ya gonna do?

So You Tell’Us! What do you think?!  Would you have painted the corbels or left them as-is?  What about the barstools?  Are you a fan of backless ones or must your barstools have backs?  So many questions!