Slipcovered Upholstered Bench

What can you do with an old, heavy oak coffee table?  Make it into slip-covered, upholstered bench, of course.

This bench really did begin life as a beat up oak coffee table.  It was sturdy, but dull and dated, and I knew that I could make it into something special.

I removed the top and put it aside to be used for another project later.  The frame got a couple of coats of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Chateau Grey, and some selective distressing and dark wax, to highlight the turned legs and curvy skirt boards. 

The new top is made from a piece of half-inch plywood attached to a 2 x 4 frame.

I painted the frame with ASCP Old Ochre, so the underside of the bench is nice and finished, too.

I totally forgot to take any photos when I was doing the upholstering of the top.  Use your imagination here ... There's a piece of 3-inch thick foam on top of the plywood, topped with polyester batting and covered in muslin, stapled securely. 

Here's Alice supervising as I screwed the frame to the top.

Now the bench is ready for its slipcover.

The slipcover has a little box-pleated skirt, which requires a LONG strip of fabric ... three times the measurement around the bench, to be exact ... the bench is 48 inches x 20 inches, and the skirt strip was over 30 feet long.  Thank goodness I have a rotary cutter, which makes pretty short work of cutting the strip.

The fabric I used is an 8-ounch dropcloth, prewashed and dried and ironed.  I zig-zagged the edges of all of the pieces, because the raw edges on dropcloth fray like crazy if you don't.

Are you ready to see what it looks like?

This doesn't look much like a coffee table anymore, does it?

Dorothy checked it out, and she says that it's really comfy.

And this is what it looks like sitting in my booth. 

(I probably should have straightened the slipcover before I took this photo.)

It feels great to get another project out the door.  I have two more things I'm working on in the basement workshop to show you later.  Stay tuned.

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