Stool Revival

Our lonely bar stool arrived at our new home damaged from improper packing and shipping. It would be difficult to fix without a completely new leg and the cost of finding one of those is probably not worth the stool itself. Not all is lost though, the stool has two sets of dowel steps. The idea here is to cut the stools legs at an equal length below the top set of dowel steps and make a shorter stool for a young one or, in our case, a planter pedestal.

Tool I Used:

1. Circular Saw (a hand saw would be difficult but not impossible)
2. Ruler & Pencil
3. Sander
4. Wood Glue
5. Safety Gear

You will need to determine how much you want to cut off but it has to be above the bottom set of dowel steps. For my stool a 12 inch ruler gave me a cutting point. Because the legs are angled I put the end of the ruler flush to the seat bottom so my cut line would be angled. Do this on all four legs and you will literally end up with a foot stool.

My circular saw allows for angle adjustments so I chose to rest my saw on a non-broken leg and set my blade angle flush to the bottom of the leg. I did not get a picture of this but imagine the saw sitting at the end of a leg and sliding the saw up the legs towards the seat until the blade is flush with the bottom of the leg. Make the adjustment so the blade is flat on the bottom of the leg and lock it in place.

Make the cuts on all four legs.

My saw was able to cut through each leg without issue. The dowel steps were not secure so the stool did buckle a little. Once all legs are cut flip it over and check to see if it stands level. My stool needed a little leveling.

I determined the necessary leg that I needed to shorten to get a level stance. Flip the stool over so the feet are in the air. I used a sander to clean each cut and then sand my chosen leg down a little to get my stool level. This may take a couple of tries.

Wood glue can be used to secure the dowel steps in place if necessary. The stool can easily be painted, sanded and varnished, or any other beautifying technique applied. One suggestion (by PaPa) was to sand the top and let kids paint their names or something unique and and also put the year for a memory. Cheers.

We ended up using paint, foam, and a receiving blanket to give our daughter a stool for her room as seen here.