Industrial Office Chair Hack

While I love thrift stores for vintage finds, I also love them as sources for parts. Collecting vintage things often means having to find parts to repair them or create an adaptive reuse for them. As a thrifty person, I’m not one to run right to hardware store to see if I can find what I need. Especially if I can get what I need on the cheap. Earlier this summer I bought this store display dress form.

I sell vintage clothes online and having a form to display them on is a must. The one-dollar price tag at a garage sale made buying it a no-brainer. Just one problem, there was no stand and it didn’t fit on any other mannequin stand I had. Surely I could think of a solution and I knew where to start my search. To the thrift stores!

There it was for only six bucks at Salvation Army—a stripped-down, vaguely Soviet-looking industrial steno chair that nobody could possibly ever want to sit in willingly. Most importantly, it had a base that I could easily repurpose.

Unlike most office chairs with a decorative base and hidden, proprietary locking mechanisms, this bare-bones model featured only an adjustable screw to hold the seat in place.

A quick swap of the chair top for a piece of one-inch metal electrical conduit, and voila! New stand.

The price of the chair, conduit and dress form combined is still less than $10. I’m really happy with the result because it doesn’t really look like a homemade solution.