Bench redo

With all of my crafting, decorating, and creating lately I am constantly on the hunt for things to work with. A few weeks ago I went with a friend of mine to a house that her inlaws were cleaning out and emptying. There was a LOT of stuff stored there, mostly files and childhood boxes of various things. I walked around with her, my eyes searching for some goodies. When I saw a bench that looked PERFECT for me, I let her know that I would love it if her MIL was going to get rid of it. She told me she would ask and see.

A couple of days later she showed up at my house with the bench. :0)

It looked like this:

So I took the top off...just found a place to start and started ripping the leather off, popping out the upholstery tacks. I got it all off and removed the top piece completely. Basically it's a board with a large foam piece on top. They were all still in good shape so I put those aside to use again.
Then I sanded it. I used a rotary palm sander and sanded it a bit. Not tons but enough so I thought it would take paint.
Then...I spray painted it. Yep, you read that right...I spray painted it black. I wasn't sure if the paint would hold, didn't seem like I got enough of the finish off and since this bench is at least 40-50 years old, I wasn't sure what would happen. Well, the paint didn't stick super great. BUT I did a few coats and let it dry. I wasn't worried about perfection because I knew I wanted to go back and sand it a bit again...distress it a little.
So that's what I did. Then I used Minwax Rub On Poly and applied a few coats of that.

After it all dried I went and picked out some fabric. I thought I was going to go for something very simple...maybe some reds and blues...paisley or a simple damask. I knew though that I wanted to incorporate red, blue, green, black, ...etc....whichever ones I could or as many as I could. I saw this fabric and decided to take a chance. It was very different than what I thought I would get.
I love it!
I really do!
:0)
This is how it turned out:

I love it! It looks great in my living room. :0)
YEA!
All it cost me was the fabric...I even took the time to spray paint the upholstery tacks black. :0)

Thanks for stopping by!

Read More 1 Comment | Posted by cajungal01