Stool Made Out of Bin

• Old trash can out of wood (doesn't matter if it's in a diferent shape or different height or anything! Just take what's laying around. You could even take a plastic bin, a wine crate... you only have to be able to screw the pallet pieces on it!)
• Pallets
• A piece of cloth, any color you like (I used an old apron, you could use an old bag, an old pillow or blanket etc.)
• Stuffing: darning wool and foam material which is about 1 cm high and little bigger than the surface of your stool (You could also only take the wool, but it will get less comfy and doesn't look as good)
• Screws
• Nails
• Agraffes
• Finish for the pallets
• A grider (sandpaper is possible too, but ONLY if you have clean pallets, because for not so clean ones you should sand the whole surface very well! And it takes way longer..)
• Padsaw or something like that
• Drill

First you need the stuffung materials, the piece of cloth, nails and the agraffes.

Before anyone can complain on how I did this step: I didn't and don't have any experience with upholstering furniture! I made up everything myself and how it worked for me! The good thing about it is: you don't need any experience yourself either and you can do it without any special material.

As you can see in the first picture: you ned quite a lot of the wool! Don't be afraid to put that much on it, because if not it will be quite uncomfortable to sit on.
So put wool on the closed part of the bin. Try to have evreywhere about the same amount, if not it will get more uneven!
Next step only applies if you have foam material. Take the foam and cut out a circle that has an about 10 cm bigger diameter than the surface of your stool. If you want even more stuffing you have to have an even bigger diameter! Then you have to cut out a triangle which is about 10 cm wide.

Now it would be easier to have someone to help you. One person has to hold the foam as the other person hammers the agrafes (picture 3) through the foam and into the wood of the bin. You can see how it looks like on the second picture. Like that you can attach the foam to the bin. Don't use nails! It won't hold it together, the foam rips too easily. Attach the foam about every 5-10 cm, so it won't fall apart again. When ypu reach he end make sure you attach the last agrafe right next to the beginning-

When you finished it the foam will look a little bit bad. It will have a big bulge in the middle and it doesn't really have a good shape, but that will change, don't worry! And how will be explained in the next step.

Now this part was quite tricky. Here it is REALLY helpful to have another person to help you.

You have to cut out a big enough (rather too big, you can alway cut off more) piece of cloth. Then put it over the foam and now you can start to attach it. For that you'll need the nails. Hammer a nail through the cloth into the side of the bin about every 5 cm. When you nail them into the wood, don't put the whole nail into it! You have to let a piece of it outside to bend it. Only like this the cloth won't rip and actually hold it when you sit on it (second picture)!

When you attach the cloth, you have to make it REALLY firm. If you don't do this, it won't have a good shape afterwards and you will have a lot of big folds (looks gross..). How to do that: if you have a partner, let him lay onto the almost finished (about 20 cm left) pillow for the bin. This wil put a lot of pressure on it and will make it way easier for the other person to attach the cloth on the wood very firmly.It may look stupid, but it works! If you don't have a partner try to put something really heavy on it, should work too.

When you atteched it all it's possible that the shape still isn't that great. But you can change that easily. Just sit on it and everything will go to it's place! That's even a great way to test your self-made pilow!
And if you're afraid if the nails an the overapping cloth will look bad: don't worrs, it will all get covered from the casing.

Now you have an almost finished stool!

These steps are all really easy and don't take a lot of time.

First you have to dismantle your pallets into pieces. You only need the longest parts and only the ones that have the same width. Take care while dismantling them! I got hurt enough from it...
Measure how high your bin is. Rather make them a little too short, because if they are too long it will sting you when you'll sit on the stool later on.
Then meaure how big the circumference of your bin is and divide it by the width of your pallet-pieces. Now you know how many pieces of them you need to cover the whole bin! (I really hope for you it's somewhat an even number if not you have to make the pallets less wide that it fits.)

Then take the pallet pieces, draw a line where you need to cut and then cut it with the saw.

These parts have to get sanded. As i said before, if the pallet is quite dirty, raher sand them a lot so you have clean pieces in the end. If they're clean make the edges softer and prepare the wood to get varished.

The best would be to clean your pallets pieces now with water and soap. First of all you make sure again the wood is clean and you get rid of the dust.

When everything is dried varnish the pieces and let them dry for as long as it say they have to until you can touch them.

The last step is to assemble all the pieces.
When the bin is round you'regoing to have the problem that the bin will roll away. To solve this problem take a pallet and turn it over. Put the bin onto the pallet (first picture), now you're able to easily screw the pieces onto the bin. When the bin is round attach the pieces with two screws. One on the top in the middle and one on the bottom in the middle. Like that you won't break the wood and it will still hold together very well.

If you don't have a round bin, you can put screws wherever you like to, use them as a decoration! You could even make a patter with them.
On the first picture you can see a small white piece of paper. I used this to make sure I always put the screws at the same place. Like that the screws aren't just there to attach the pallet to the bin, they're also a decoration! That's why you should always use the same kind of screws!

When you attached all the pieces to the bin, you're finished!

I was really astonished when I saw my new stool. Out of an old bin, an apron and an old pillow I got a really modern looking stool! It's really stable and even very comfortable.

I hope you enjoyed this Instructable!