Turning a Basic Bench into an Upholstered Beauty

DISCLAIMER: PREVIOUSLY WOODEN FURNITURE WILL BE PAINTED IN THIS POST.

To be fair… said piece of furniture was painted years ago. Sure, I did the deed… but this post is more of an upgrade. A reinterpretation. A zhoosh. When we first bought this ol’ house, I found a wonderful wooden bench. The wood was lovely, but it wasn’t quite the right color for any place in our house and, well… I did it. I painted it. And I upholstered it. Both.

It lived in our bedroom for a bit. Until I stumbled across an actual grown up sized dresser to fix up. Oh, and we had an edible baby named Louisa. The bench had to go to make room for her changing table. (You know the game of furniture dominoes, right? Move one thing and everything else has to move around?!)

That bench sat down in our basement. The yellow frame and stenciled fabric didn’t really work anywhere in the house, but I loved that bench. Couldn’t bear to part with it. (Incidentally, that’s the furniture hoarder’s mantra… we say it a lot.)

But then I had an epiphany. In the frenzy of getting everything ready for Mark’s big birthday bash, I remembered that bench. Wanna know how to change a basic wooden bench into a lush upholstered show stopper? Keep reading.

How to Transform a Bench into an Upholstered Loveseat

I thought the bench might actually work in our No Mans Landing, so I gave it a new coat of Rustoleum’s Antique White spray paint. I had the velvet in my stockpile and it’s the most beautiful rich blue. (We considered it for our Flea Market Flip locker bench, but it felt a little ‘too’ bright for that.)

The seat was upholstered as normal. I removed the old fabric and wrapped the velvet around nice and tight. Like a hug.

The back panel was a little different, but not that complicated. Again, I was lucky to have some foam and batting in the basement so this project is landing me a cost of $0. My type of project. I cut some foam to cover the back slats on either side and used a shot of spray adhesive to keep it in place. Then I wrapped the whole thing with batting and stapled it under the bottom edge.

I followed with the fabric. I stapled one end all the way across, then wrapped it nice and tight all the way around the back of the bench and stapled it again right ontop of the first staple line. (I was glad to have my pneumatic staple gun for this one as I needed a little more force and precision, but you shouldn’t have any problem with a regular ol’ staple gun.)

Around the sides, I tried to pull the velvet as tight as I could and stapled as close to the edge as I could. I definitely made some mistakes stapling that I had to go back and pry out… but no permanent damage was done! Then I trimmed the fabric as close as I could.

To cover the staple lines, I used my hot glue gun to adhere a colorful green gimp. (If your local craft store doesn’t have the right color options for you, don’t hesitate to ask a neighborhood upholstery shop… ours has all the colors in the rainbow and I always find something that will match… he sells to me for a pretty good rate in most cases!)

I love the way the lines on the rug echo the table and the table echoes the throw pillow! Oh… and zero people sat there for the party because we were outside… how’s that for furniture rehab logic?