Upholstered Pine Stool for Dressing Table

I’m not a native English speaker, so my writing could be incorrect in grammar or vocabulary usage. Please excuse me.

Also, I used my mobile phone to take pictures, so the color and quality is not good.

I’m totally not either a professional carpenter or a skilled wood worker. I only have great interest in making things by myself. I've just completed a pine wood stool for my wife's dressing table and love to share with anyone who may be interest in.

I love pine although it’s not quite a good material for long lasting products because of its softness nature. But it’s easy to find (from old palette) and its grain and color are beautiful.

Step 1: 1. Materials:

- Lumbers of any kind you may have but it should be strong enough to hold the weight. Here I got those pine lumbers from an used pallet. They look quite dirty, but will change later.
- Foam & cloth. You can get them from a local sofa and cushion shop
- Tools: You will need a miter saw, hand drill, power planer, sander, handheld grinder/polisher, hexagon screw tools, and a diy wood threaded insert tool (You can find how to make one from Youtube). But if you don;t have power tools, hand tools are far good for the job.
- Screw: I prefer staying away from Phillips screw as they are easy to snap then take time to remove them. So I use hexagon screws and wood threaded inserts for my project.

Step 2: 2. Preparing Materials

- Cut the lumber into right dimension. Mine are: 4x450mm (17.7 inches) for legs, 2x320mm (12.5 inches), 2x220mm (8.6 inches)
- My plan is to make a stool of 30cmx40cm (11.8 inches x 15.7 inches)

Step 3:

- Use the planer, handheld grinder/polisher to remove the dirty and rough surface of the lumbers.

Now you see what I mean when said they’d change. The clean-up process removes the rough outside and reveals the beautiful grain and the adorable pink white color of the pine lumbers.

Step 4: 3. Putting Everything Together

- Use the 90 deg. corner to align the leg and the crossbar.
The 90deg. corner alignment tool came from a shelf hanger which beautifully fits for the corner alignment job.

Step 5:

- Predrill 2 pilot holes for the hexagon screws. You can see the 2 holes are not in line because I didn’t use the guide. The next one looks better with a guide.
- I used 6mm diameter screw, so I used a 6mm drill bit for the job. Remember to drill through the leg to mark holes on one end of the crossbar.

Step 6:

- I change the drill bit to 8mm for the pilot holes of the wood threaded inserts
- Use the wood insert tool to drive them into the pilot holes until their heads lay flat against the wood surface.

Step 7:

- Insert the hexagon screws and tighten them firmly
- Do the same for the other half and here’s what I had. The two halves.

Step 8:

- Now we connect the 2 halves
- Pre-drill screw holes on the other crossbar
- Align to pre-drill holes for the wood inserts
- Insert the threaded wood inserts

Step 9:

- And insert the screws but don’t tighten them yet. Find a flat surface and align them to make sure they’re all square and then tighten one screw after another.

Step 10: 4. Upholstering

- It comes to the final stage. I've never upholster a chair, so this is my very first trial and experience
- I have a piece of plywood left over from my previous project
- Measure for cutting. I trimmed off 4 corners so that they won’t make sharp corners. Sand the edges.

Step 11:

- This is a piece of foam I got from a computer package. I cut it to the size of the plywood, 1 inch longer than that of the ply wood. And glue them up.

Step 12: + Adding the Stabilisers

- While waiting for the glue to dry. Let install the height adjusting screw for the stool
- These will help balance the stool on an uneven surface.
- Predrill holes to fit the bolts
- Hammer the pointed nuts down the predrill holes & screw them in

Step 13:

- Now the glue is dry. Let put the fabric on. Cut the fabric so that you can stable it on the back of the plywood. Stretch the fabric for a nice flat cushion later.

Step 14:

- Finish, now try it on the stool
- I used 2 tiny square & screw to connect the cushion to the stool.

Step 15:

- And the final product. Adjust it a bit so that the cushion fully cover the stool and you’re done.

** Cost:
- Pine lumber: $0.00
- Foam: $0.00
- Fabric: From an long time purchase. Large piece $ 2.00
- Hexagon screws: $0.50
- Legs: $0.70

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