A few years ago I found an upholstered bench at a garage sale for $20 and I snatched it up.  It was brown “leather” and kind of worn, but it was hinged and opened up to allow for storage inside.  I’m always a sucker for storage.

We used it for years as a place to sit and put your shoes on by the door and we stored extra blankets inside.  But recently it moved to the garage because of a space crunch and it was just about to head to Goodwill when I decided to resurrect it.  No need to get rid of furniture, right?  It just needs new life.

And it found new life in Ellie’s new room.  This is such a great redemption story…

The original bench, missing buttons and all

Great storage area inside

To start the transformation I removed the hardware and carefully removed the existing fabric.  I was very careful to watch how it was stapled and put together so I could recreate it with my new fabric.  I just used pliers and a flathead screwdriver to pry the staples out (if I could).  Some were stubborn and stayed behind.  Oh well.

I saved the inside lining to reuse because I didn’t want to have to figure that out myself.

Disassembled and ready to be remade

I measured the dimensions, including overlap for the wrap around area, and headed to Fabric Depot.  I found a great turquoise upholstery fabric on the clearance rack and picked up five yards (some for this project and some for a super cool future project I’m really excited about).

I also covered some buttons in a turquoise and pink Michael Miller fabric that I fell in love with.  I figured I’d tuft it since the foam indents seemed to be leading me in that direction and there were already holed drilled for the original buttons.

Once I got the top upholstered, I added the buttons, pulled the strings through, knotted them and stapled them down (this is how the original buttons were attached).

Here's a close up of how I secured the buttons

Wrapping the fabric around the base posed a challenge.  How was I going to hide the eventual seam?  I’m glad I paid attention when I took it apart, because I just copied what they did.  I stapled one end down, wrapped it around and stapled the top down, then when I got back to the beginning I folded the ends under to create a clean edge and let it be.  I just stapled the folded end on the top and bottom.  The seam is clean looking and I made sure it is on the back.

I hope this picture makes the last paragraph less confusing

Once all the stapling was finished and I reattached the hardware I called Ellie out to look at her new bench.  She fake fainted again.  I think she likes it.

I included a special surprise inside for my girl that loves yellow.

  She picked this fabric out for bunk bed curtains, but now she’s not in the bunk beds.  I wanted to give it a great new home.  It may end up in pillows also.

In her room

It's new purpose - a place to keep her princess dresses

Let’s take one more look at this transformation.  Oh how I love making old things new!

For more detailed reupholstery instructions, check out my tutorial for reupholstering chairs.  The principles I used there were very helpful in this remake also.

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