Thursday, January 21, 2010

Recyle bin decor part II : The coir stool

Artsomniac's interest in recycle furniture has reached a new level with the newest addition to the room, the little coir stool. The raw materials for the coir stool also came from the recent cable work in the hostel. Artsomniac has serious doubts whether she should get a 'recycle goddess' title! what thought!!

However, a detail of the raw material hunt goes like this. Artsomniac sets her eye on the cable bobbin which was found inside the mahalaqa hostel dump yard premises. The cable bobbin was not exactly that near the dirty dustbin, but artsomniac pushed the bobbin a little towards the dustbin to get the desired 'trash to treasure' effect while blogging. Such little stage managements are allowable, right folks? So, the raw material number one is at hand now.

The second step is to remove the sides of the bobbin, so that you have a neat skeleton of a cardboard cylinder.

Now for further raw materials, go on a field trip to the nearby town (Sitaphalmandi in artsomniac's case). Walk until you find a shop where you can find coir. A good friend (thanks annie ;-)) who enjoys paani puri and window shopping might come handy in such situations. Oh this is one time when artsomniac missed kerala other than for food. The quality of the coir in hyderabad is not comparable. However after a long walk, artsomniac and good friend found average quality coir for 2 rs 50 ps per meter in this shop. For this stool, we need atleast 10 meters.


The next step is to carefully wind the coir to the structure we have. It has to be tightly wound to get best results. The design will evolve when you try to save practical problems. So that is the tip for organic designs. Once the winding is done, you can burn the surface using a candle to remove the roughness of the surface. Also, this will give it an antique dark shading. So here, the second furniture project is complete.



better view







This goes really well with the coffee table.





And for all those who wonder about the strength of the furniture, I guarantee, this is quite strong. I have been using it for a week now and it is not showing even the faintest signs of collapse. :-)

7 comments:

crumbs said...

woah! VERY nice!
are these ideas copyrighted? can one rip them off from here? pretty please? :)

prabha said...

ha ha, sure they are copyrighted ideas, but you can copy with due acknowledgements! so there, and hurry, there aren't many of these cable bobbins, i believe there is still one more inside the LH. flick it as soon as you can!

crumbs said...

at it! :D

Elika said...

Very interesting, great work! Try adding a little plush? Maybe it will look good.

...karthika... said...

Prabha, u dont know... u saved me today. u did... u really did. I'm indeed grateful. thanks a lot.

prabha said...

@ karthika, what are you saying?

...karthika... said...

well, to put it simple i was a bit depressed in the morning. anything cud have happened and i happened to visit this blog very accidentally and that changed my mood. I could reflect upon it as i saw ur attempts to give breath to an almost expired thing.... indeed it helped me.:)