Cardboard Furniture

First Step: Design a Prototype

The idea of doing a foot rest came from our first project: a rocking chair made of cardboard. We wanted to make something that we would be able to use with the chair, so a foot rest was the first thing that popped into our heads.

We decided not to make it very simple, we wanted something with curves, but not a lot of them (as you can see on one of the pictures the drawing that is crossed over).

Second Step: Build the Prototype

My partner missed a couple of classes after we designed the prototype, so I had to build it mostly all by myself which took too many hours of class. After a couple of classes I saw that in order to make the prototype and long and the real foot rest it would take us a couple more classes, so we decided to stop working on the prototype and start making the real foot rest.

Third Step: Building the Foot Rest

1) Measure and Draw the Shape on Card Board

The first step of the building part is the drawing of the object that we want to build, and that is what I started by doing.

The thing about our foot rest is that each half is parallel to the other, so they would have to have the exact same measurements. We decided to use tracing paper to make sure that we would end up with 2 exact halves.

2) Cutting the First sheet of Card Board

My partner used a Multitask Saw to cut the first sheet of card board, the one that will serve as a model to everything else.

3) Start Stacking Card Board

After cutting the first sheet of cardboard we started stacking sheets of cardboard using wood glue to keep them together. After we glued an inch and a half of cardboard sheets we put some weight on top of it so that it would actually stick together.

4) Change in the System

Our initial idea was to stack two different legs and then just unite them with the cushion, however when we presented it to our teacher he suggested that we should just stack the whole foot rest. We eventually decided to do it...

5) Keep Stacking 

After we changed our minds we spend the next two classes just stacking cardboard and getting it ready to cut. We would, again, stack an inch and a half of cardboard and then we would put a single sheet with the shape of our foot rest so that we knew what to cut.

Conclusion

After we decided that we had a big enough length that would allow us to sit in a chairs and put our feet on it, we stopped staking. After that we just made the final touches with the sander and was finished!