Makepost 001 - Drafting Stool Refurb

I found this cute and sad little drafting stool abandoned by the dumpsters at my apartment building. The star base seemed to be in pretty good condition, and it had a wood-burned UC Berkeley CED (College of Environmental Design) logo that I thought was a neat little local connection. It also reminded me of these pieces of shit that we had in the studios in architecture school, the root of all my back problems. (lol, lmao even)

The plywood was in pretty rough shape - the shellac was peeling off, the exposed areas were water-damaged, and there was some warping and delamination on one side. However, I have this thing where I feel in my bones that I have the ability to refinish furniture, despite my almost 0 qualifications. So I decided to see what I could do. Worst case, it turns out poorly and still makes a pretty ok plant stand.

Some metal polish did a pretty nice job on the chrome base, and I was able to remove some tiny specks of rust with 000 steel wool and a ball of aluminum foil. I didn't immediately realize that the cap in the center of the star base was chrome painted plastic, until I accidentally removed some with the polish. So it was back to the hardware store for some chrome paint.

Fixing the structural damage on the seat was pretty straightforward - I was able to fill the gaps with glue, clamp, wait, and repeat until the edge was back in good shape. Then, a ton of sanding to remove the shellac.

Once the shellac was removed, there were some pretty distinct bands of light wood where the coating had remained intact, and black-stained wood where it had been exposed to moisture. At first, I tried a light-colored stain that had a bit of white pigment in it, thinking it might cover some of the darker areas. It was way too opaque and just looked terrible.

So I sanded that down, and had a little bit of success using bleach to lighten the water damaged areas. The bleach left the surface a bit patchy, so I used, umm, don't make fun of me, but I used colored pencils to even out the tone. I was tired of going to the hardware store, I was tired of tripping over disassembled stool parts, I needed this project to be done.

Several coats of Danish oil actually gave the wood a very nice, satiny feel, and honestly, I still don't think it looks all that bad considering. The seat definitely has a reclaimed wood kind of look to it, but I mean, I guess it kind of is!

The wood-burned logo, which was faded on one side to begin with, had been further eroded by my many refinishing attempts. I decided what the hell, I'm just going to go at it with my soldering iron. I know there are chisel tips I could've bought, but again, I was tired of going to the store! It doesn't look great but it doesn't look completely horrible either.

I'm pretty happy with it! It was a learning process! It looks completely acceptable, and now I have a nice stool for working on projects.