Our Bedroom Bench
Creating the perfect bench to fit our bedroom redesign.
For our anniversary, my husband and I decided to redesign our bedroom as a gift to ourselves. We had just moved our last baby out of the crib in our room and into their own, and that in itself is a reason to celebrate! Our room is shaped like a rectangle and we changed the placement of the bed from being on the long wall to placing it on the short wall. It made our space feel so much larger and it made room in the design for adding a bench to the end of our bed. It is something that I have wanted for a long time because we always have one kid or another hanging out with us in there and we needed more seating so everyone was not taking Dad's spot on the bed. Plus it is so nice to have a place to sit and get your shoes on or an extra space to fold laundry.
I started looking for the perfect bench, but couldn't find anything I loved and was the right size to fit our space. So after locating the perfect design, and with stars in my eyes, I batted my eyelashes at my sweet husband and he agreed to make one for me to fit the design I fell in love with. He sure does love me! Here is a picture of my inspiration photo.
He started by purchasing some pre-made legs from the local home improvement store and cutting the bottom section off the legs to make room for the shelf. Then he used a piece of plywood for the shelf itself, attached the legs to it, and built the frame and supports around the top. You can see the mortise and tenon joints he made in the legs for extra support.
He then added the top piece and also added trim around the plywood to hide the unfinished edge.
We filled all the holes and gaps with putty and it was ready to paint! I painted it with 2 coats of a cream colored chalk paint and once it was dry, I used two different colors of stain to go over it to give it an aged wood look. I just put them on with a foam brush and let the stain sit for a few minutes and wiped it off until I got the finish I was going for. I then used a spray polyurethane to seal it.
Next, we had to get ready for the upholstery and the tufting of the bench. I marked holes in the top where the buttons would be pulled for the tufting and my sweet Carpenter drilled holes for me.(After I had changed my mind a few times!) I spray glued a 4" foam pad to the top and wrapped it in batting, which I used our air compressor staple gun to attach underneath. I cut holes in the batting and pad to allow the buttons to be pulled down into the spots where the hole were drilled. (You following along with me?) Next I laid the upholstery material over the bench leaving plenty of room on all sides. Then one by one, using an upholstery needle and waxed thread that had been fed through the back of the buttons, I pushed the needle down through the upholstery, batting, and into pre-drilled holes to the underside of the bench. (I should have taken pictures!) I worked the buttons down into the holes I had cut and pulled the thread as hard as I could and used my staple gun again to attach the thread underneath the top of the bench. I stapled each one like eleventy-million times to make sure it was secure.
After all the tufting was done, I smoothed the upholstery fabric down and stapled it underneath the bench. Then I added a faux nail-head trim around the upholstery. It looks like individual nail heads but it's really just a big roll that you nail down every four or five nail heads to keep it secure. And it was finished! Voila! Here is our completed bench.
Thanks for following along on this latest project! It turned out as beautiful as I had hoped thanks to my wonderful husband's awesome carpentry skills and my emerging upholstery skills! We've been using it for awhile and it has been a wonderful addition to our bedroom. It has helped with the seating issues and has been a great laundry table.
