Upcycled Wooden Crate Stool with Lights

We always love a challenge especially for crafts, DIY or transforming anything to something useful for the family. This time around, we are taking on the Energizer Re-imagination Challenge. We were sent a wooden craft box filled with random items like a tie, a ball of string, colouring pencils, clock, paper plates, craft equipment, a mop head and many more. After showing it to Mr K, he decided to make a stool out of the box itself.

To make our wooden crate stand out, we attached fairy lights to it and since this is an Energizer challenge, we used Energizer EcoAdvanced batteries to power them! Did you know that Energizer has re-imagined the battery category with the world’s first battery made out of 4% recycled battery material? They aim for the EcoAdvanced battery to be made from 40% recycled battery material by 2025. Energizer® EcoAdvanced™ is available now in AA and AAA sizes in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Wilkinson’s and other retailers.

Energizer is running a Re-imagination Challenge for anyone who love upcycling at home. The prize for two entrants who come up with the most imaginative creations is a fantastic overnight stay at the Science Museum in London along with a GoPro camera, so they can film the whole experience! You have until the end of September to enter, so don’t wait and submit your details here via Facebook: CLOSED.

As this is an upcycling project, everything we used here are everyday items we found at home. I didn’t buy anything to make this project. I found a half a tin of fence paint that we had left in the garage for two years and used it to paint the wooden crate. Next, I used leftover cloth (from my previous project: DIY Fabric Toilet Paper Holder) to cover an old pillow to make a seat. Even the fairy light is old lighting that we had packed away in a storage box.

These are the materials you need for this project:

• Old paint & paint brushes
• Wooden crate
• Thick string or cord
• Hot glue gun
• Buttons
• Double sided foam
• Duck Tape
• Coarse sandpaper
• Leftover cloth or pillowcase
• Pillow
• Fairy lights

Method:

1. Sandpaper any rough corners to get a smooth surface.
   
2. Paint the wooden crate inside out and leave it to dry before the second coating. Both of my children were very keen to help out with this bit!
   
   
3. Use hot a glue gun to stick all the buttons on the wooden panels.
4. Fix the fairy lights around the wooden craft with double sided foam and Duck Tape.
   
5. Cut a roll of string/cord and tie it as shown in the picture. This is the handle to make picking up the stool more comfortable.
   
6. You can either use an old pillow case for the seating or stitch the cloth onto the pillow. I have choose the latter as the cloth looks better on the wooden crate stool than my old tacky pillowcase. Once the pillow is stitched, place it on the top. Or another idea is that you can cover it with tablecloth to make it into a small coffee table.
   

So this project took us around a day to do and it is very simple that my children could help me! Hope you like it and do enter the competition!

Disclosure: I received the random items from PR for free. However, they have not paid me for this post, and they do not exercise any editorial control over my post or anything else on this site.