I wouldn't consider myself short, and I can certainly reach my top kitchen cabinets, but sometimes I just need that extra height to really see what the heck I'm grabbing up there. Sure, I could have gone out and bought a stool, but I wanted to use up some scrap material I've had laying around forever. I know not everyone is going to had some already cut, square foam to use. What I would have done in that case, is use a square cardboard box that is completely filled to max capacity with old plastic shopping bags. An easy way to use those all up, and keep them out of a landfill.
You will need:
Some sort of base material. I used foam blocks.
Duct tape, 1 roll of any color, and 1-2 rolls of a color you want the stool to be.
Shelf liner. (I used up 1 whole roll)
Scissors
I started off using my normal duct tape to tape the blocks together so they wouldn't more around while I worked on it. If you're using a box, you'll probably just need to tape everything shut.
Cut your shelf liner to size. Make sure there's some overlap on the stool. Mine fit pretty nicely, so I cut 4 equal pieces, and then staggered them as seen above.
Lay your shelf liner down on what will be the bottom of the stool. This is so the stool won't slip around while you're standing on it. Tape a little over the edge, and then down onto the sides on the stool, working all the way around to secure the shelf liner to the stool.
I also did a strip of tape across all 4 corners, just to fully keep the shelf liner contained under the tape.
Now you can start adding the colored duct tape to the stool. I found this bandana patterned duct tape at Michaels, and they have a great selection of colors and patterns to choose from. Starting with all the edges, I began to lay the outer duct tape down.
From there you can start filling in all the blank areas. I followed a strategy of beginning at the bottom side, going all the way over the top, and down the other side. I realized after a few strips that I needed to alternate the direction of the tape to make the pattern line up and look better.
That's more or less it! I will admit, I ran out of the bandana duct tape. I should have gotten 2 rolls to be safe. Just a good excuse to go to Michaels again!
Now I can reach those spices with ease. And it's very lightweight, so it's not a pain to drag out. It's defiantly not as attractive as a store bought stool, but it does the job fine, and I got some use out of things I would have otherwise thrown out. See what you can come up with, and what cool duct tape you can use to make it.
No comments:
Post a Comment