Thursday, August 11, 2011

My DIY Attempt At Pimping Up a Set of Ikea Stools


We have 2 basic Ikea stools in our home and they are at the entrance. We use them to sit on and put on shoes etc. They were annoying me simply because of their lack of any aesthetic value they added to the area. I contemplated looking for something to replace them but I knew I would just a soon want to change that around (give how easily I get bored and want to change things around) not to mention how much I would spend on something new. Just then I had a genius thought or so I'd like to think .. of doing a simple pimp up of these stools. The good thing is that if I made a mistake it wouldn't cost me an arm & a leg and well if it came out well .. I'd be super happy and then share it here with all of you :)

So here it goes a quick step by step guide to pimp some boring stools at home.

What you need:
1. 2 Stools (or as many as you want)
2. Thick'ish Ironed Fabric enough to cover the stools (I used less than a meter)
3. A glue gun (hot glue)
4. 2 round cushions (not very thick)


How to do it:

Step 1:  Access your stool.. then place the cushion on top of the stool and cut out the bit of fabric you will need to fit & cover it. Be a bit generous as its always good to have a bit more instead of a bit less.
















Step 2: Heat up your glue gun. Place the cushion on top of the stool seat and keep lifting it up and putting the hot glue between the seat and the cushion and pressing it down immediately. I realised hot glue cools very fast  and doing it this ways ensures you can quickly stick the cushion to the seat.















Step 3: Lay your fabric down print facing the floor and then put your stool upside down with the cushion on the back of the fabric. Make slits to the fabric in accordance with where the legs of the stool will come and then pick up your glue gun and start gluing the fabric to the underside of the stool seat. When doing so try and ensure that there are no creases and that the you neatly fold the fabric on the sides.












Step 4: The back of the stool doesn't look the prettiest and in the case of an Ikea stool you can screw off the legs in the beginning and when your done with the seat put a piece of material over it or a cut out board. Lazy me I've just left it as i don't really think people will be looking under the stool :) But once your done with you're gluing ... Voila you have a set of nice to funky stools and in my case definitely made the entrance a bit more attractive than it was previously :)

              
   




Price wise 2 stools were 90 Nok (that's 2 cups of coffee here in Norway) The fabric 50 Nok , the Cushions 100 Nok also both from Ikea and the glue another 50. So in about 300 Nok I have 2 fun stools.

Now I know its not the biggest achievement in the world and definitely not the hardest thing to do, but  I'm still happy that it was cost effective (as was the husband), it took 2 hours one evening (works well for my short span of attention) and I love them !! :)

5 comments:

Anna said...

super like! and good to know that ikea has round cusions, was looking for some of those for a while.

Helen Issar said...

:) thanks Anna , & yup they sure do :)

Yarny Days said...

That is so cool. I think it IS a big achievement! PS: No idea you had a blog.. well, now you are in my reader.

Helen Issar said...

Thanks Rima :) have had a blog for a while but not been the most regular blogger working on that part now :) I love following all your creative projects on your blog ..

Arpita said...

Hey Helen,Arpita here. Just chanced upon your blog, and I must say it's quite impressive. I see you also have a talk coming up tomorrow at Kynkyny Art. Was pleasantly surprised to come across this bit of news while going through the events column of our edition.