FrankenStool

It is no secret that Franca loves to eat. Even when she was a tiny baby, we would sit her in her bouncy seat or highchair seat on the countertop while we were cooking. Well, she got too big to do that safely (and honestly, the chair manufacturers always recommend against it, rightly so.) Recently she wants me to hold her while I'm cooking. After hearing "uppie! uppie! uppie!" about a millions times, I decided it was time to do something about it.

I google kitchen stools and found about 3 products that are pretty awesome kitchen helper towers. Problem? They are $130-$200 and I'm cheap! So I was busy sketching out my own kitchen tower to DIY, when a more simple idea struck me. Why not just Frankenstein the stool she already uses to wash her hands?

The issues with the existing stool are the following:

• The platform is not long enough, leaving a dangerous gap between the front and the cabinets.
• There is a gap at the sides so she could easily topple off.

So I decided to:

• Make the platform longer by attaching a piece of plywood.
• Attached sides, the trick here is to make it so that it can still fold up nicely and small.

The platform is 3/4" plywood scrap thru-bolted to the seat. The sides are 1/4" MDF zip-tied to the side of the stool/ladder. The good thing about this is that if I do end up making a proper "kitchen helper" we can just cut the zip tiles and unbolt the platform and the stool will be in its original state.

Franca was super excited about it.

Now the only "uppie" I hear is when she needs help getting up on her new stool.