I Upholstered a Bench

I upholstered a bench. I didn’t really want to, but the lead-times to get anything done are so crazy, I turned to YouTube to become an upholsterer.

This space was too crowded with the media console, so I was going to replace it with a bench that could be pulled up to the glass coffee table for extra seating at parties, gatherings and so on. Losing one of these baskets too!

I ordered this bench from Wayfair advertised as covered in leather, aka: vinyl. This fabulous thick tweed fabric from Kravet was going on it. We hope!

New tools: an upholstery staple gun and a professional staple remover.

First step – remove the black mesh thing from the back. I am going to save it so I can put it back on when I am done adding my new fabric. These staples were so hard to get out, I had to use (my rusty) pliers to remove them!

Almost done. Next question, do I actually remove the fake leather fabric – OR – do I upholster right over it???????? YouTube was not helping me answer this question.

I decided to recover over the the vinyl. The thought of removing another round of staples was not appealing.

Here it goes! I slowly stapled the fabric up the sides, leaving the two ends open. The corners were scaring me.

Corners open. Now I had my YouTube videos on repeat to finish these corners. To add additional difficulty, I picked a very THICK tweed fabric. Making the corner issue, well, an issue.

Can I just leave it like this?

Don’t judge my corners! It took multiple attempts to get them looking even this good. The fabric is so thick, my little staple gun was rebelling!

Another view. I fixed this corner to make it much tighter, but I was in a full on fight with this tweed!

Not looking too bad. Time to add back the strange black mesh thing.

Voila! I will say, using a staple gun for multiple hours is hard on your hands…

Now I get to put the legs on this baby. Look at the lame wrench they sent me? The top of the instructions indicates that this bench could also be used as a coffee table or a desk. WHAT?

One side on. I am too tired to continue, so going to bed.

Both legs on. I wanted a modern bench with no wood, so let’s see how this looks!

At first I was worried that the legs were too skimpy, but I had a bunch of people sit on it and it held up just fine. Kind of cute!

I think it will be nice to pull up for extra seating over the holidays and it makes this part of the room look a little lighter. I am having two pillows made out of this same fabric for our couches, so there will be some symmetry. But I am not making the pillows!

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