Stools, Comfy Stools, part I

There finished! And they're wonderful.

Anyone want the nitty-gritty? Here goes!

In this post of yore, I talked about the fabrics. Now on to the rest.

While my parents were here, we took the first stool cushion apart. I tried various methods of getting the fabric off without having to take the staples out. Didn't work out so well. And they kinda needed to come out for function's sake. That first attempt.was.awful. Mostly, Ijust didn't have the proper equipment, and taking out 70-80 staples per stool with the claw end of a hammer or a flat-head screwdriver is NOT the way to go. It took forEVER and was super hard and tiring. So I started my online search for upholstering tools - what I needed and where to get it. Found what but came up empty-handed on where. A staple remover - like a forked flat-head.

Lowe's didn't carry them at all and I couldn't find it on Home Depot's website. Next I tried finding upholstering/furniture stores in my area that sold them. Empty-handed again. A few people I talked to said Lowe's or HD probably had them, which was becoming a little frustrating to hear. "Yeah, you'd think anywhere that sells staple guns would sell heavy-duty staple removers" (my annoyed thoughts).  One upholstery guy said he'd take out the staples for $15/stool (=$60). Uh, not if I can buy that tool for $15 and do the work myself! Long story short, Home Depot does carry them. Just not online. Can I get an exhausted "hooray"?

Here are a few pictures of what I thought would be more efficient, but turned out to be more dangerous than I had hoped it would be.

That can't be good...

Soreness. Can you see my red palm? There were several other red, sore spots, too.

I was doing so good at going around the stool and uprooting one end of each staple without incident, until I had maybe 5 staples left! That's when this happened:

Deep gashes. It got three fingers in multiple spots. They didn't show up very well in the picture, but man, did they sting. All in the name of efficiency. I think I called it a night and then used the pliers to pull the staples out the next night.