Bench Recovery

While on my project kick this weekend adding storage to our laundry room I got around to recovering the bench that lives in the front hallway. I have been meaning to recover it for awhile, especially since I dropped a paint edger on it face-down (oops!) and got a big gray rectangle on the fabric when I was repainting my office. I absolutely love how it turned out. Something about how the white and gray fabric makes the brown wood parts look like dark chocolate looks so chic! The old cream and orange fabric brought out more of a warm chocolate color. You can see what the bench used to look like before and after I recovered it a few years ago here (and below).

Recovering a bench is CRAZY EASY. It took me all of one hour to recover this bench in two different fabrics. I did a white layer first to make sure the old fabric didn't show through my new fabric.

Here's the bench before... notice the gray paint on the upper right!

The first step is always removing the bench seat from the legs. This step should be very easy. Just flip the bench over and unscrew the top (should be 1 screw located near each leg).

My next step was to find some white fabric to use as a barrier from the old fabric to the new fabric. I tested it first and knew the old would show through the new.  I simply laid the fabric out and eyeballed how much I needed by laying the bench seat on the fabric and cutting about 4 inches extra all around it.

Next, basically wrap the seat like a present. Pull the fabric really tight and staple it in place on the four straight edges first, then fold in the corners and secure with more staples. I repeated the same process with my new patterned fabric. I was careful to look at the printed side first and decided which part of the pattern I wanted to be centered on the bench.

Reattach the top to the legs, and viola! New bench:

Bench Happy

Besides being obessed with anything that is on casters and can roll, I have been quite into benches lately. I have never before owned a bench and in the past 2 weeks I have acquired 4 of them. 

This first one came from a garage sale in West Lafayette ($5) and is in desperate need of repainting.

I also bought, painted, and made a cushion for this cheetah topped bench featured here.

Then, my parent's gave me this one. As you can see it is in rough shape. I am hoping T.J. will be nice enough to fix it up for me someday.

I found this next beauty at a garage sale this past weekend with my mom. When I saw the legs resembled the lines on my new vanity, I just had to have it. I thought I would put it at the end of my bed originally but have since found a better spot for it.

I thought it needed a little sprucing up so I took off the bench seat...

 

... spray painted the legs brown, and recovered the seat to match my new couch pillows.

I think she turned out pretty cute myself. :-)

 

And she looks pretty perfect in my foyer. Now I just need to paint the walls and find a rug!