Do you have a counter top seating area in your home?  We added one when we remodeled and it comes in quite handy.  The kids will have breakfast and lunch there.  If it’s a casual dinner, say pizza on Friday, it may be grabbed there.  Often, when guests come over, they plop down at the counter!  It’s great because I can be fixing things in the kitchen and still visit with our guests.

There were all kinds of opinions (unsolicited) offered to me regarding what type of stool I should select:

“You can only fit 3.”  (Probably true, but how can I only put three there when I have four kids?)

“You need the counter at bar height – people with long legs won’t fit”  Probably also true, but having the counter at one height gives us a little more work space for everyday tasks.

“This style would be perfect.”  The gentleman who sold us our couch tried to sell me the most horrendous stools.  They were heavy wood and had large backs.  I felt it would not fit our style and that the stools would also be in the way of our traffic flow.

So the search began.  I looked online and at all the local furniture stores.  I finally found a simple stool at Crate and Barrel.  The brushed aluminum was just the right material to pick up on the brushed nickel accents in the kitchen, but not as stylized as some of the other stools I was considering.  They are lightweight, swivel, and can be placed easily under the counter overhang.

You know that quality matters to us here at the sewing studios of Maiden Jane, so we were disappointed that the swivel mechanism broke on almost all of the seats. I am thankful that I am married to a mechanical engineer because he fixed them (along with most of the broken things in our house….but that’s another post.)

Recently, I was looking through CSN’s store and came across their amazing selection of stools.  This one is very similar to the one I purchased.

I was tempted  by the following style since my back-splash is black and white checkerboard, but my kitchen doesn’t really reflect a 1950’s style, so decided against it.

I really get lost when I’m on CSN’s web site.  Stools are just one fraction of the items they sell.  I was looking at their baking pans the other day and was also searching through their sewing/ironing aids.  I am going to test out another cord minder.  (Yes, I’m still on a quest for something to hold my iron’s cord!  Such a simple thing.)  I’ll report back with my review!