I have always wanted to learn to re-upholster furniture. Once my mother-in-law and I bought fifteen yards of beautiful upholstery fabric to recover a thread-bare love seat I had.



We took detailed pictures of how it looked "before." We planned to take all the old fabric off and use it as a pattern to cut the new fabric. She is one of those people who can figure out a project with minimal instruction. I was basically just going to be there for support and to observe. It was going to be a piece of cake.

But then kids came along, she got extremely busy at church, and to make a long story short, seven years later I still have the bolt of fabric we bought. The love seat is long gone. It was just such a big project to tackle.

My friend Heather is another one of those people who can just take a project and figure it out on her own. She's not afraid to try anything. When she offered me this free hand-me-down ottoman in need of some serious TLC, I decided to let her help me recover it. I'm such a good friend.


I found a fabric remnant I liked for $4 and purchased a matte finish black spray paint. Then I got out my staple gun and called Heather.

We took off the old fabric using the end of a hammer to pull out the nails. Then we took off the legs and spray painted them black. After they dried, we put them back on and added a new layer of batting to make it a little softer than the original bench, stretching it across the top and stapling it to the underside. Then we started playing with the fabric. It took a few tries to figure out what would look best. Basically we just stretched it across the top and turned the ottoman upside down, then we started stapling along the sides, keeping the fabric pulled taut. Okay, she was doing all the stapling because I was too nervous to mess it up, but I did stop Ethan from eating several discarded nails! When we got to the corners, we folded the fabric so it looked nice, cut out a little fabric where it was too bulky, and stapled it down. Again, it took a few tries to make them all four look right, but really, that's all it took. That and some serious sugar to occupy the kids so they'd keep their hands out from under the staple gun. And here's the final project. Total cost: $6.


Stacy just recently completed a very similar project using some fabric in her stash that she loved but didn't know what else to do with. A vintage piece, some fresh paint, and a few staples and voila! Restyled into a hip piece of furniture!


Your local thrift shops and have tons of things like that just need a little paint and fabric to bring them back to life. And it really is easier than you think!

{P.S. I miss you, Heather!}