Tufted Bench

Is Christmas over already? It doesn’t even feel real. I can’t believe how time has flown by this year. So many milestones have happened in our family and we have been truly blessed. I’m so thankful for the opportunity we have to build a house, sell our townhouse, and have so much love and support. Mr. Whitelane wanted to get me an entry bench four years ago when we bought our very first townhouse. We didn’t have very much money and what we did have was going to buy that little townhouse. He came home for our anniversary with this brown bench from Wal-Mart that was only $49. We didn’t even end up using it in our entry because it just didn’t work there. We ended up putting it in our master bedroom. Even when we built our new townhouse we still kept it in our bedroom. I wanted to paint it in our new townhouse and reupholster the seat. I was very worried about attempting to reupholster a tufted piece (I don’t know why because it wasn’t bad at all). It sat it in our bedroom for a year after we moved to the new townhouse. I was going to sell the bench and buy a new one. I looked a lot of places and all the benches were at least $100 or more. I found some I really liked but I just didn’t want to spend the money on that. So I decide I was going to paint it and reupholster.

I took the top seat apart from the legs by unbolting the screws. I then took the base legs outside and used my trusty Kilz primer to get rid of the brown. After that had dried two hours I put on a nice even coat of Krylon semi-gloss white spray paint. I left that to dry and cure while I figured out how to tackle the reupholstering.

I had reupholstered tons of chairs and cushions before but nothing that was tufted. I went to Hobby Lobby and found this great neutral fabric. I also picked up some upholstery buttons and a long tufting needle. When I got back home I removed all the brown pleather from the cushion. now there was just foam. I could see the holes where to thread the buttons and then it all made sense. I used the fabric to cover the small upholstery buttons and snap them back together. Next, I placed my fabric on top of the cushion and used my long needle to thread the buttons through the fabric and the cushion seat holes. I did this in each place where the previous holes had been used for the tufting. I used twine to thread the buttons to the bench seat because it is stronger. I then stapled them to the bottom of the wood cushion base and tied them off. Now that all my buttons were tufted, it was time to staple my fabric to the cushion. Remember to do your corners last. I like to staple all my sides first. Then I take my four corners one at time, to fold them nicely and staple them down.

My legs had dried and I decided to take sand paper to lightly distress some areas. I then took the top cushion and screwed back together the legs and seat. It obviously was not perfect but it looked so much better. I decided it still needed something else so I went back to Hobby Lobby and got some oil rubbed bronze upholstery tacks. Let me tell you that was a whole lot of work. I got individual tacks and it was such a pain hammering in each one and trying to keep it on a straight line. I got off in multiple places but you can’t tell unless you examine closely. I don’t think I want to do upholstery tacks again unless I absolutely have to! I love the look of them and I think it finished off the bench nicely despite the trouble.

After all that work I decided to sell this little bench. Since we decided to build a house and sell our newer townhouse; I knew this bench needed a new home. When we get settled in the new house I will probably finally splurge to buy a nice bigger bench for our master bedroom. I don’t know? I might even buy two sitting chairs instead. As you can imagine, my mind is spinning with design ideas for our new house. I can’t wait to actually move in and get started. Until then Ill be day dreaming….