I'm an extremely busy guy between working ten-hour days at my job, then remodeling our entire house in what's left of my day.

Add to that trying to stay involved with my wife and two boys, and you can see that I have no extra time for fun projects. But I do get an hour-long lunch break, and we have a shop at work, so back in February I decided to play around with some scrap lumber.

Using SPF (Acronym for Spruce/Pine/Fir) 2"x 4" and 2" x 6" lumber, I cut out all the pieces I would need to build two matching bar stools for our picture window - breakfast nook in our kitchen. The project quickly became too time consuming to fit into my lunch hour, so I brought it to my shop.

Once the two stools were solidly built, I took a torch to them.

To give them a rustic, worn look I lightly burned the edges of the wood. This was my first time using this technique on my work, although I had seen it done before. The result was incredible!

But I wasn't done burning my wood yet!

I first used a pencil and free-hand-drew some spruce trees onto the back of both stools. I then took a wood-burning pen over my pencil lines, permanently searing the image into the stools.

After that, I mixed my own shade of green oil-based stain, and hand-brushed color into my spruce trees.

I painted the stool legs rather than stain them. I wanted the seat to stand apart from the legs. After the paint had dried, I distressed the stool by gouging it with screws to create "damage" from "years" of use. I then applied a tinting glaze over the paint with a rag.

The tinting glaze builds up in the knots, gouges, and other imperfections, highlighting them and giving the piece a more aged, worn look.

After many hours of labor, my stools were ready to take home (to an already cluttered house, due to the extensive remodeling.)

Like everything I build, these stools should stand up to many decades of use. I overbuild my projects so that they will outlast my lifetime, and can be enjoyed by our boys. Every item I build is labeled with my name and date of creation. It is my sincere hope that I can some day label my work with my Created by Countryinspired brand name and logo!