Worthy Barstool Upgrade

About 9 to 10 years ago, recognizing the need for a couple of barstools in the (at the time) growing garage arcade,  I picked up a couple of the typical "flame-style" barstools from the local Harbor Freight.  They were pretty inexpensive from my recollection… somewhere around $30.00 each. Yeah,  they were hard,  but they worked. They managed to make it about 5 or 6 years before the ball-bearings in the swivel came falling out of the first one, requiring me to remove the swivel and mount the seat directly to the legs.  It was about a year later that the second one lost it's bearings and it too was mounted directly to the legs… but they lived on.

One thing these Harbor Freight barstools seriously lack,  however,  is comfort.  They've always felt like you're sitting on a piece of wood essentially.  Because of this I've wanted to replace them with "properly padded" barstools for a number of years now,  but a quality barstool with a decently padded seat comes in at about a hundred bucks a stool and,  well,  the current stools still "worked" (albeit uncomfortably).   I even monitored craigslist and letgo in hopes to find a couple of used barstools at a reasonable price.

Then,  a week or so ago,  while poking around Amazon I stumbled upon barstool replacement seats for $59.95 for two seats (Click HERE).  I also found that replacement swivels can be had for $19.98 for two (Click HERE).  So for a total of about $80.00 (for Prime members at least) I could get the components necessary to build a better barstool.  With bated breath I clicked the ORDER NOW button and waited for my parts to arrive.

First to arrive were the swivels.  The first thing I noted when I picked up the package was the weight.  DAMN… these swivels are reasonably heavy duty in comparison the to crappy Harbor Freight swivels I threw in the garbage all those years ago.  I don't anticipate these will be shedding their ball-bearings anytime soon.  After checking to make sure the bolt pattern matched up with the holes in my current stools legs,  I set them aside to wait for the seats which arrived a couple days later.

When the seats arrived I opened the box eager to determine if what I bought was quality or garbage.  I was thrilled to see that what arrived was easily 10x the seat as the ones I was replacing.  The padding is SO much nicer… SO much thicker… and it's wrapped in what appears to be quality Nogahide-type material,  not the crappy plastic looking/feeling crap that the Harbor Freight seat was wrapped in.  Since I planned on tossing the two Harbor Freight seats,  I figured I'd destroy one to see what's going on under the wrapping.  I figured that I would find 90% hard material and 10% padding… and my suspicions were confirmed.  The seat is made of a plywood bottom piece attached to a plastic top piece with an approximate 1/4" thick piece of cheap-foam "padding" strretched across the top covered in the cheap plastic outer shell.  It felt like I was sitting on hard wood because I was essentially sitting on hard plastic with 10 year old cheap quarter inch foam on top.   The new seats,  in comparison,  appear to have about 1" of hard wood type material on the bottom with the rest of the seat being padding.  The padding feels "substiantal" and not likely to flatten out anytime soon.

Overall,  I am thrilled with my "new" barstools.  I ended up paying only about $40.00 per stool and if the Harbor Freight stools lasted 10 years or so,  these should last a lot longer…

MORE PHOTOS:

Please share...