Furniture From My Mother-In-Law

My mother-in-law (I started this post yesterday and had typed MIL, but in a conversation that had nothing to do with my blog, my husband said he thought it was totally lazy to use MIL, so mother-in-law it is.  I hope he appreciates the extra typing I'm doing) moved out of the country and gave us two of these benches/stools. 


Kindly ignore the random pieces of molding in the background

 We're having a bit of a debate about whether they would be considered benches or stools.  I guess the debate is really if you're supposed to sit on them or rest your feet.  Feel free to weigh in.  I'm not going to tell you which side I'm on because I don't want to sway you at all. 

Back to the bench/stools.  That's kind of long to write and say though.  I should come up with a portmanteau.  My niece and I are big on making portmanteaus.  Oh, you don't know what a portmanteau is.  I didn't know the technical term for it either.  I had to look it up to write this post.  Portmanteaus are where you combine two or more words together to make a new one.  Like brunch (br[eakfast][l]unch).  Or linner (l[unch][d]inner).  Can you tell I'm hungry right now?  How do you guys feel about benools (ben[ch][st]ools)?

I'm getting majorly sidetracked today.  I don't know what's wrong with me.  So the benools came to our house (technically garage, I'll explain why in a minute) from my mother-in-law's.  We need furniture, so why would be pass them up?  The fabric is kind of retro cool.  Kind of.  And the lines of the stools themselves are nice.  So why not just stick them in the living room and let them be?

The colors don't go well with our wall color (which we just painted when we moved in) and it's definitely less work to change the benools than to change all the walls.    



I know it's not really poisonous to mix gray paint with brown and orange fabric, but it might make me feel sick if I had to look at it all the time.

The most important factor causing me to change the benools is the smell.  My mother-in-law had these benools for who knows how long and the whole time they lived with her she was chain smoking around them.  We've had them in the garage for a month and they still wreak of smoke.

I sprayed them down with Febreze.  No change.  The smell is stronger than what Febreze can handle.  I think it has inundated itself into the depths of the fabric and it's not going anywhere.  So if the smell won't go, I guess the fabric will have to.  I'm going to go to Fabric Depot this weekend to find something new.  I'll let ya know what I find.