Good Questions: How Can You Make Bar Stools into Regular Chairs?

4.13barstool.jpg Hello AT,

I have two bar stools, but I'm moving into an apartment without a bar! I'm thinking of buying a bar table, but I think a regular table would be more useful. Has anyone ever cut down bar stools to make them regular chairs? How would I do it? The legs are metal.

Thanks! Melissa

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Anyone?

Comments (10)

Sounds a *little* like one of the projects they do in one-day makeover shows... you know, the moment when many viewers at home mutter, "Oh, not such a great idea."

Unless they have extreme sentimental value, I vote for selling the stools on Craigslist and using the cash to buy chiars you really want.

If committed to the truncation, any hacksaw that cuts metal will do it. Measure the height, tape off the leg above the cut line, and have some plan for capping or sanding down the cut.

Watch the metal dust and be prepared for a fairly horrendous sound.

I think patrick has it spot on, if that's the way you decide to go. One problem might be the lower perpendicular support that runs around the legs. It may end up too close to the floor depending on how much you lop off.....
My votes for dumping them and getting new chairs.

I'd either get the bar height tables (aren't the new tables the higher height anyone?) or just get rid of them. I mean, you aren't married to these chairs, let them go to a new partner.

Don't do it. I've seen cut-down bar chairs before and they're awful.

Unless you remove it, the footrest bar is only a couple of inches above the floor which both looks funny and gets in the way (especially when you try to get out of the chair). The legs also end up looking wrong because they don't spread out far enough.

Yes, legs that don't spread out far enough, never good.

P2 is going to be responsible for my death one of these days, and the coroner will say, "busted a gut laughing" and that won't be funny.

Meanwhile, he's also right, because seriously you do NOT want to accidentally cut one of the four legs shorter than the others, which seems fairly inevitable with that particular little operation.

Take them to a metal shop, you'll find them in the Yellow Pages, because they can do it evenly and make sure the chair is stable. They can also shift that footrest or remove it entirely and add other stabilizing supports. Still, chairs are relatively inexpensive these days, so you might want to consider new...

A metal shop simply cannot cost less than new chairs. The only way you should have them do it is if those bar-stools were hand-wrought by your very favorite late parent, or parent-substitute figure. They don't appear to be like that.