Office stool

Remember when I showed you the vintage toledo stool? I wanted something similar to the office. Something industrial. Well I got real lucky on friday.

Okey I should start with a story about the company I work for. The company supplies technology for process industry. It had a factory and offices in Helsinki, but the factory was getting small and unconvenient and the company desided to build new fancy factory to a new location. Also a building for the offices was acquired from near the new factory. In past few months the factory and the offices have been slowly moving to the new location. This leads us to the stool. It was announced that on friday everyone could go to the old facilities to check if there is anything they would like to take home from there. So I went there, mostly there was office furniture made of cheap particle board and broken down plastic office chairs. But from the factorys side I found a stool made of heavy duty piping and a plywood seat. Just take a look. Pretty cool.

The leg of the stool was in pretty good shape, but the seat part was covered in black paint.

Also it was cracked from the edge.

I dissassembled the whole thing and washed it since it was filthy!

The leg and seat needed some sanding, the seat especially. But first I glued the seat to remove the crack. I used quite many screw presses to get even pressure to the curved edge.

Then some serious sanding, I started with the leg while the glue was drying. It did not require much work since I felt it was very good in the first place. But to remove all the paint from the seat took a long time and my arm is still aching from all the sanding.

The seat had small dents and scratches that also had paint in them, but if I would have wanted to remove all the paint I would have needed to sand off a whole layer of the plywood and I also did want to leave marks of the wear and tear it's had. After the sanding it looked like this.

I love the wood that showed under all the paint. Then I used varnish to protect the wood. It needed six to nine layers of varnish! Six to nine! Most of my saturday was spent waiting for the layers to dry, each one took half an hour. I'm not a patient person, I hate waiting, so after six layers of varnish I desided it's done. When the final layer had dried I could reassemble the stool and behold!

 

I especially love the stripes on the wood, the varnish really made them show.

One more picture, now with the before and after side by side.

 

How you like the change? I still need to get plastic covers for the legs, so it will not scratch our parquette, also I'm thinking of changing that black plastic tightening knob to a metallic one, but it's in no hurry.

It's perhaps a bit more industrial than I thought I'd like to have, but I love it!

Oh, and how did I do with the office organizing I planned to do this weekend.
- Organize files on laptop CHECK
- Organize files on external hard drive CHECK
- Put all crafting stuff back to crafting cabinet, Um... I put most of the stuff back but there are some left.
- Clear office table from all the paper, Also mostly done, better than nothing. Ay?

I'm quite pleased with myself, now I can move on to the bathroom part of the hybrid cure.