We’ve been hard at working making our work area in the garage at our Birch House feel more like a workshop and less like a storage unit that also houses our tools — it’s slow going, but we’re making progress! Today’s video will show you how we built this simple but smart flip-over bar stool step ladder to work double duty as both a workbench seat and a step stool to help us easily reach the upper cabinets in the shop. Inspired by the popular Benjamin Franklin ladder chair that Scott built, we sat down to design our own version of the Hoosier step stool: a simple 2×4 bar stool that flips to become a step stool, no fancy hardware needed. Perfect for our workshop or for any other small space that needs double-duty furniture! Watch the video on our YouTube channel and let us know if you need one for your shop, too — or if you’d like us to design one with a bit more style to use in the kitchen and inside your home, too!

This style of step ladder stool is sometimes called a Hoosier step stool, since it originated from the same small house necessity and design ideas as the Hoosier cabinet of the early 20th century. Our version is so simple and easy to build, and the best part is that we built it for $0 using 2×2 and 2×4 scraps from our other projects (like our 2×4 and More building series where we only used common dimensional and construction lumber). Even if you don’t have an extensive scrap pile like we do, it’s really affordable and simple to build in just a couple of hours following our building plan.

So far in our workshop video series, we’ve cleaned up and organized the shop, organized our ever-growing collection of work clamps, added a mobile dust collection system, and — the crown jewel (so far!) — built this amazing (if I do say so myself) table saw workbench. We’re lucky enough to have some great cabinets already, and we’ve maximized the space by hanging them high, but even at above-average height, we needed a boost to reach the top shelves and make that storage space work more efficiently for us. This bar stool step ladder makes it even easier to get to work in the shop and get things DONE! And it fits just perfectly on the storage side of the workbench.