Recover Your DIY Storage Bench

It's super satisfying to look back at a project from four years ago and think, "Yes! This was so worth it. I love what I made and use it on a daily basis." 

That's how I feel about our DIY Storage Bench of 2017. That bench was an essential part of our townhome's living room décor, holding the kids' toys and standing strong despite lots of sitting (and jumping...) on it. The cube's structure held up, only needing some occasional screw-tightening. The white finish did a great job withstanding the constant pulling and pushing of toy boxes. The cushion, though a little droopy on the front corners from supporting so many sitters, is still foamy and comfortable. Somehow, mom's crazy idea of using hardboard and attaching it with command strips worked perfectly. In fact, I never took the cushion portion off (until very recently). The only things that didn't hold up were the $5 cloth bins from Shopko. Ah, well, we can't have everything.

Now, in our new home, we put our toy-holding bench in the playroom, but it didn't vibe with the bright, rainbow look I was going for:

I knew I wanted to recover it, but we were also in the midst of covid lockdowns. So it sat, like so, until mom came for a visit a few months ago. Masks on and with my fabric expert in tow, we ventured to JoAnn's to pick a brighter cover for our bench.

Can I make an aside? The fabric we bought last time was awesome! Outdoor upholstery fabric for only $3 a yard??? It lasted like a dream, and the pattern hid any spots and dirt that must have inevitably gotten on it after years of use with little kids. Our new fabric, though adorable, was much more finicky to work with. What did we get, you ask? Mum, take it away:

This time we chose an indoor upholstery fabric that picked up the corn color in the pennants hanging on the wall. It has a classic pattern that makes a brighter, bolder statement than our previous choice. It is heavy duty and should wear well. But it was also expensive; I think it was listed at $30 a yard. (Fortunately, we had a couple of coupons and got it for half off.)  It is an indoor fabric and doesn't have the built-in protections of our earlier outdoor choice, so we sprayed it with ScotchGuard to help protect the surface from inevitable spills. Laurel's note: we also sprayed the previous fabric with ScotchGuard. One must be thorough when one has young kids...

So, how would this thicker, brighter, more finicky cloth, work on a bench cushion? Since the original cover was still smooth and taut, we opted to put the new fabric on over our old one. This was less time-consuming and saved us a lot of staple-removing, but it also meant the fabric under our hardboard was getting thicker and thicker. Would it be too bulky? Would the command strips still work?

We decided it was worth the risk and, like last time, started to staple. This bold, big pattern made it more essential that we line up the fabric just right to keep the pattern lined up and square along the cushion. There was lots of adjusting.  Also, notice that mom made sure we doubled over the fabric before stapling to avoid fraying. Nice thought, mum. 

This fabric is also much more stretchy, which is its own, special pain. Pull it too taut along the long sides, and the foam will develop a weird, wavy pattern along the staples. Leave it too loose and the bench is frumpy and prone to catch. It took some fiddling to determine the right tightness... and even then, we were wrong. I went back a few weeks later to pull it tighter at the short ends. This avoided ripples and gave the cushion a clean look.

Speaking of the ends of the bench, they were, again, much harder to arrange with thicker fabric. We cut out awkward chunks along the corners to try and avoid awkward bunching (with mom's encouraging "Trust me, this is totally normal when upholstering" to give me courage as I snipped out more and more corner fabric, praying I wouldn't take out too much.) Still, we made it, and a million staples later, we came to the moment of truth: would the command strips still attach it to the bench? Yes! Our folds of stapled fabric were just thin enough so the "velcro" part of the strips could connect and stay put. They are still doing their job a couple months later.

Truly, despite the difficulties, I'm proud of  this project.

DIY Storage Bench

4/23/21 Four years later, this bench is still going strong! We did decide to recover it in a new fabric; click here to see the process!

Can we talk about how much I love window seats? My dream house definitely has a window seat, perhaps flanked by bookshelves so make it a reading nook. If our current place was actually ours and not a rental, I'd already be scheming to build one into our bay window.

As is, when I decided I needed a better storage solution for the toys in our living room, this DIY bench seemed like the perfect solution. Target had a basic storage cube on sale for $45 (if I was mother, I realize I would have built the bench. Alas...) Looking now, Ikea lowered its price of a similar shelving unit to the same price (it was $60 last month. Blechy. Why is furniture so expensive?)

After buying and assembling our storage organizer, we needed items for the cushion. We bought a giant, 3-inch slab of foam from Smith's (who knew, right?) for $20. We later saw the same size foam for the same price at Home Depot. We cut the foam to fit the top of our bench: 57 & 3/4 inches by 14 & 9/16 inches. Since we didn't have an electric knife (the cutting tool of choice for cutting foam at JoAnn's), we just sawed by hand using a serrated bread knife.

This left enough foam for mom to take home for a bench of her own, so in the end the foam was only $10 for each bench! Love. 

Now, I was tired with a newborn and not thrilled with paying money for MDF board and then bothering to drill and screw the cushion to our shelving. I thought we should just cover the cushion, put it on our cube unit, and call it good. Luckily, mom was in town to help me and insist that, like the tutorial, we affix the cushion to the bench. At Home Depot, a helpful employee suggested we use "hard board" instead of MDF board for our project. What is hard board, you ask? It's basically a strong and thin white board, and a giant sheet costs only $10. Plus, they cut it to size for free! We put the foam on the hard board and then draped them in quilt batting, as per Mommy Vignettes suggestion, to keep the cushion smooth.

Tightening the batting as I went, I stapled it to the bottom of the hardboard for a smooth, finished look.

We found some awesome fabric on clearance at Joann's for... how much was it a yard, mama? I forget. Okay, you'd better shpeal everyone on the fabric, come to think of it. I'll just add the picture.(Aside from Mom: Fortunately I was there during a JoAnn's 50% off Red Tag event, so we found our Waverly upholstery fabric for $3 a yard! We chose an outdoor fabric that we hope won't fade from the sun coming in the window and will be relatively spill proof.) 

We cut the fabric amply big enough to wrap around the foam, batting, and board with three-ish inches overlapping onto the back of the board. You can see we measured and lined everything up upright on the cube organizer to make sure it would look just right, but finally I had to carefully flip the cushion pieces over to staple the fabric to the back of the hard board, pulling it taut as I went. The corners were the most time-consuming part; I tried to take extra care so the fold lined up at each corner to prevent asymmetry or puckering.

Now, how to attach the cushion? Mom was convinced that we could use the large Command velcro strips. That way, we wouldn't have to drill holes into the shelving unit should we decide to use it in another capacity later. As much as I love these damage-free miracles, I was skeptical that they'd be sturdy enough to really secure the cushion (or that they would even be thick enough to adhere to each other. After all, there's quilt batting and fabric along the edges of the hard board). I was so wrong! These work like a dream; I put one large strip at either end of the board (one side on the hard board, the other on the top of the shelving unit), and these two strips alone work great for us so far. Unlike the blog post we followed, we didn't add legs. The height seems just perfect for us without them. I think it turned out splendid. We scored some bins for $5 a piece at Shopko to hold and hide the toys. 

Plus, because mom is awesome, she made these matching pillows and promised to make curtains in a coordinating gold fabric that was also on sale at JoAnn's. Tutorial forthcoming, mama?

Again, feel free to check out the recovering process four years later!