Hansen Family Project 5: Upholstery!

We have been quite fortunate in our furniture situation this past year, my brother and sister in law "stored" their stuff in our home while he went to school in California.  Worked for us, we got a fully furnished home in the blink of an eye. (we are so appreciative of their willingness to let us use any furniture or decorations we wanted!) However, due to graduation and a job acceptance, they are currently looking for their own place and will be wanting their things back, and rightly so.  This simply means that the hubs and I need to furnish our home with our own things.  A few positives and negatives with this situation:

Pro: Our own furniture that I get to choose!

Con:  Our own furniture that I have to choose

Pro: A clean slate!

Con: We actually have to research and find good prices and actually spend money for these things

Pro:  My husband is an excellent carpenter

Con:  That just means I have become an excellent sander, painter, finisher, and upholsterist.

So in light of our situation, we do have a couple months probably to replace the big things like a sofa and couch and dining room table, but I found a lovely little ottoman that I fell in love with at Pottery Barn (it would be Pottery Barn, notice the price).  That is one item we will need to replace, so I showed David, thinking...ok hey, that doesn't look TOO difficult to make right?  We could do it.  Thankfully, not to my surprise, he said "Oh yeah that would be  pretty easy to do...as long as you upholstered it" DONE

At this point I had absolutely no idea how to upholster anything, but I figured I could diligently search on pinterest and whip it right up.  All I cared about was that I was going to get a brand new ottoman, for MUCH cheaper, and whatever color and fabric I wanted! WIN WIN

Step 1:

Have an incredible husband make the amazing base ------check!
(I helped a bit in placing the slats though! We just used wood glue for that, tough I know).  But David even angled the legs about 5 degrees so they wouldn't stick out if you were looking from a bird's eye view, and just to give it a bit more of a luxurious touch! I love it.  He used the life saving Kreg Jig to hide any nails during the construction...we love that tool.  And he whipped up that sucker in like two nights.  Like I said, he is incredibly talented.

Step 2:

Sand the entire piece------check!
 I used a fine 100 grain sandpaper with our electric sander.  Worked like a charm.  We used pine wood for the entire thing, and it sands into butter softness.

Step 3:

Choose a stain or paint-----check!
We knew we wanted to keep the grain of the wood visible (we are suckers for natural wood), however I did want something a little bit different and brighter.  White wash! Perfect casual, rustic look, that brightens up pine wood perfectly and gives the house a little bit of a different feel.  We bought this from Home Depot.  Probably the only place we go to as much as the grocery store.

Step 4:

Finish the wood----check!
This is where David gets very picky.  Always makes me do two coats and really really well.  Makes sense though, we want that ottoman protected! But this project I wanted to keep with the matte, rustic feel of the stain color and so went with a satin finish.  I LOVE IT

Step 5:
Choose Fabric----check! Took forever to decide though, but I am pleased

Step 6:
UPHOLSTER

Ok so I decided I wanted to tuft the fabric (those little buttons on the top that pull parts of the fabric down), with the help of friends and family we decided on 21 tufts.  With a lot of pinteresting, plus a little David creativity we learned how to do it.

We chose a two inch high density foam pad (got it off of amazon....joann fabrics is SOOO expensive...go with amazon or Home Depot), got some quilt batting to make it more fluffy and rounded, bought a 3/4" thick board from home depot to attach the upholstery to, and then David would attach that to the base.

So we marked out where each tuft would be on the board, drilled small holes through it where an upholstery needle would fit through to thread the button and pull it down.  We placed the foam, batting, and then fabric on the board with fabric adhesive spray.  And now here's where David's ingenuity came into play. . . most blogs and things said to just pull the thread to the desired tightness and then staple it underneath to the board.  This works find but it also makes it hard to get the buttons all to the same tuft depth.  So David came up with a creative, easy peasy way...after the button is threaded simply tie the thread around piece of metal and then just twist! Each one is twisted about the same amount of times and it's easier to adjust the tightness, untwist, or twist some more.  Then we stapled them down just to ensure they don't unravel.  It's so quick, easy, and not hard to fix if one pops or loosens.  Oh the mind of an engineer.

(ps. we used upholstery thread sold from Joann, and doubled the string to unsure it not breaking)

I am over the moon happy with how it turned out.  I fabric protected it with Scotch Guard.  Currently it sits at the end of our guest bed on the main floor since we don't need it yet in our living room.  Figured that would keep it safe from the little monster running around drooling all over it for at least a couple months.  I cannot wait to add couches, chairs, end tables, and who knows what else to our humble home.

The other projects we have done (again mainly david) consist of:  the game Kubb, our TV stand, our entryway bench, guest bathroom shower bench, and the incredible bed David made for us! Whats to come....probably some end tables, and David wants to make our dining room table!  Family projects are so much fun!