How to renovate a Westy Stool
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Everyone who has a Westy camper wants an original stool. The majority of Westy campers are missing their stools as they are detachable from the camper and soon get left at home to make space or damaged by reckless use. With trader's selling stools in good condition for over £100, cheap stools have lead a hard life but all is not lost. With a little work and not much money, the stools can be restored back to as new condition.
The first thing to do is to remove the fabric cover. The cover is held onto the wooden base by hundreds of small staples. The staples have to be removed by using the edge of a thin bladed screwdriver and levering the staples upwards. This takes ages to do but is the only way of removing the fabric. Once removed. I soaked the cover in cold water with a hand wash solution. This removed a number of stains but not all so I ended up paying £4 to have the cover dry cleaned which removed all marks
The wooden base of the stool is attached to the metal frame by hidden screws. The screws are located under the foam which is glued to the wooden board in the centre. Undo the screws and detach the board from the frame.
The next part is the bit were it starts to get messy and a bit of elbow grease is required. The paint on the frame of most stools is usually scratched to death so the paint must be removed. To do this, I first used Nitromors paints stripper to remove the majority of the paint - as the picture shows. I then had the frame shot blasted to remove all traces of rust and paint. Sorry, I could not take any pictures as you must prime the shot blasted frame as soon as possible or rust will set in even quicker as the steel is so clean.
After the 2 coats of primer had been allowed to dry for a few days, I used an aerosol of VW Alpine white to paint the frame. The alpine white was the closest colour I could get to the original. It has a slight blue / grey tint. One aerosol was enough to put 2-3 coats on the frame. I allowed a day between coats and used T-cut to bring out the shine. The wooden board was re-attached to the frame and the foam cushion was re-stuck (I pulled it off by mistake) using spray on adhesive. Then it was just a case of re-stapling the cover to the base board. This takes some time as you have to be careful to remove all creases and keep the corners of the cover in line with the foam edges to stop ugly wrinkles.
When I bought the stool, 2 of the feet were missing. I tried everywhere but could not find a foot that was close to the original - until I had a new machine at work. Only problem is that I had to buy 50 feet at £1 each from the supplier. So if you need any new feet, let me know. That's it - the stools finished and back to its former glory. Total cost was around £14 with the feet and dry cleaning. Paint cost around £6.
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