An Ottoman With Coffee Capsule Container

At work, we have a Nes... so. coffee capsules dispenser. The dispenser is fed with plastic tubes full of coffee capsules. There is a huge consumption of coffee capsules and a big number of plastic tubes are thrown away regularly. the tubes are quite nice, I collected some of them and I was looking what to do with them.

As a birthday gift for a friend, I decided to do an ottoman.

I used 19*2= 38 tubes, pool noodles, and a plastic leash to attach parcels.

I decided to keep the coffee look: I kept the tubes with their original sticker, and I inserted coffee capsules of different colors in the tubes to decorate.

I initially published this in my blog (in French):

olivierbricole

Step 1: Reinforce the Bottom of the Tubes

It takes 19 tubes which are naturally arranged in a hexagon (6 sides therefore!)

As the bottom of the tubes is a bit thin, and this end will be in contact with the ground, I reinforced them by cutting the upper part of the tube, which is thicker, and installed it around the lower end of the tube.

At the end 2*19 tubes were necessary

Step 2: Decoration With Coffee Capsules

To decorate the tubes, and also for the joke, I collected used capsules to put them in the tubes. the capsules have nice shape and colors, they are visible through the transparent tubes.

I dried them on the stove, it smelled coffee roasting at home!

Step 3: Insert Pool Noodles in the Tubes to Make the Seat Pan

To make the seat pan, I was looking for a foam, I found that Pool nooddles would fit perfectly.

I cut them with an electric knife to get a neat shape and inserted them in the open tube. It was not so easy, but with motivation .... you can do it.

Step 4: Attach the Tubes Together

the last step is to assemble the 19 tubes, arranged in an hexagon.

I used 2 plastic straps which are used to attach parcels. They are quite strong, not expensive, and quite neat.

At the end you can seat on the stool and it resisted the birthday party, and it is a fun re-use project.

There is nevertheless a defect, if you seat with an angle or a side load, it deforms itself, it is quite flexible, it doesn't behave as a single stool, but more like a sum of tubes, the tubes move relatively, and you can ear some noise of tubes sliding one against the other. To make it more rigid, it would have been necessary to attach the tubes together to take shear loads between tubes, so that they cannot slide and it behaves as a assembly.