A Coffee Table Becomes a Bench

Moving into our house has inspired me to creatively reimagine some of the furniture we had in our apartment for new purposes, so today I thought I'd share how my mom and I turned a coffee table into a brass-and-velvet bench during her recent visit.

You may remember the previous iteration of this coffee table. It looked like this:

I originally bought it at an estate sale, painted the crap out of it and enjoyed it for about a year in our apartment. But when the table got moved into our new, much larger living room in our house, it felt small and dinky. Why not turn it into a bench with a box cushion, I thought? This would be the perfect project for Mom and I to tackle during her visit this past weekend.

She and I stopped into a few stores on Fabric Row in Philadelphia, just blocks from where Adam and I used to live. Adler's Fabrics had a good selection of cotton velvets displayed, which is where I found this peach/salmon cotton velvet for $10/yard.

And, don't worry: though there's a lot of pink in the living room now (thanks to the tufted sofa), that will all change when the sofa gets reupholstered. Once I decided on a color, Mom and I got to work. Actually, let me amend that statement: Mom took the lead on this project and really deserves all of the credit for carrying it out. We started by cutting 2" foam to fit the tabletop of the coffee table with a utility knife.

Next, the wooden tabletop was covered with spray adhesive and the foam was placed on top to adhere. A layer of cotton batting was pulled over the foam and stapled to the wood. 

We then cut 4 strips of the velvet: 2 for the long side of the bench and 2 for the short side. Mom stitched those together and we checked the fit before cutting the largest piece of fabric for the top of the cushion and strips for the welting.

 Then, Mom got to work slowly sewing together the 4 sides, the top of the cushion and the piping. We pulled the cushion cover over the foam and...tah-dah, it fit! The next and final step was to staple the bottom of the cushion cover to the wooden base (this is also when we stapled the bottom portion of welting to the cushion). 

Reattaching the tabletop-turned-box cushion to the brass base brought the bench to life!

Here it is, my new velvet and brass bench, in all its glory:

I'm so happy to take something I already had and give it a new purpose in our new home.

What do you think?

P.S.: Can we get a round of applause for Mom on this one? She's earned it!