Wooden Bar Stools

Bringing A Touch Of Pub Into Your Kitchen Midst With Oak Bar Stools

If putting oak bar stools beside your minibar makes you feel a little bit pretentious, you are probably haven’t seen how well they could be used to enhance your kitchen/dining area. Bar and counter stools are instant mood setters in a kitchen breakfast counter or bar area. It gives guests that feeling of wanting to try the seat, and if made in quality oak, can give you instant talking points as they usually look beautiful and even more so if you have a real oak bar to go with it.

Bar stools are usually higher than counter stools by a few inches, as most pub counters, from which they originated from, are usually high. They can be of wood, metal or chrome frames and the seat can be in cloth or leather. As bar stools are not really a kitchen must-have, they do not usually come cheap (the smaller the market, the higher the price) so it is always better to buy good quality ones right from the start.

One way to understand how beautiful a furniture is the bar stool is checking how architects use it in their home. I usually like to read home improvement magazines and bar stools that are perfectly placed and utilized to enhance the décor impress me because I know how it can also as easily turn kitsch.

One of the most impressive uses I ever saw was that of a French couple who renovated an old pub and turned it into a very stylish flat. This couple bought an old brasserie/bistro (coffee shop and lunch place by day, pub at night) for dirt cheap and chose to renovate it. They turned the old kitchen into a family room, the old stockrooms into bedrooms. But what was amazing about their renovation project was how they used the old dining hall and bar. The old dining area, they transformed into a dining area covered wall to wall with their books. But the old bar, they turned into a beautiful open counter oak kitchen, complete with the pub style stools. They did not remove anything from the old bar as it is made of good wood, they simply cleaned and repainted everything and the effect was amazing.

The old bar shelves they now use as shelves for their dinner wares with a break in the center for the stovetop and the exhaust hood. The oak bars counter hides all the pots and pans under its belly. The couple with their kids uses the bar counter as breakfast table. And as it is very near the door, the kids usually make a full stop at the kitchen counter when they get home, sit on the bar stool for their snack, and often ends up doing their homework there while their mother is preparing dinner. It is one of the most utilitarian and yet elegant uses of the bar counter I have ever seen in my many years of flipping through home improvement magazines especially because it is not made for a single guy living on a loft as is usually the case with renovating old pubs, but for a family.

So if you have the chance to buy quality bar stools for a good price, don’t think of it as being pretentious. Your investment in that oak bar stool might pay off if you can manage to integrate it in your home décor in a very tasteful manner.