Got a few 50-gallon oil barrels littered in your backyard? Do what these guys did – shape it into usable seats, add some upholstered cushions, bring it to a gallery (for art cred) and sell it for north of $400 apiece.
Laden with humble beginnings as containers for oil and other liquefied products, both the Butaca Bidon (pictured above) and the Silla Bidon (below) have been fashioned into functional lounge seats, with affluent-sounding European names to boot. The former retains a good chunk of the frame, using the cylindrical drum base as the actual foot of the chair, with seat and backrest cushions added for comfort. The latter, on the other hand, uses one end of the drum to provide the chair shape, plops a thick seat cushion and adds metal legs as base.
While these types of salvaged furniture look pretty snazzy as a home project (I bet they’d look handsome on a garage), they’re really questionable as designer pieces. The drums don’t even look like they’ve been laser cut, as it sports uneven lines around the edges, with the cushion upholstery seeming to offer nothing special.
If either of these two lounge chairs catches your fancy, I’m pretty sure you can hire some local furniture maker to replicate them, as they don’t seem to fit in anything unique. Throw in a car engine under a coffee table and you’ll have the coolest garage lounge in the neighborhood. Both recycled drum chairs, the Butaca Bidon and the Silla Bidon, are available from the Vaho Gallery for 295 Euros and 265 Euros, respectively.
[Butaca Bidon and Silla Bidon, via NerdApproved]