Scraplog

DIY: Ottoman From Scratch

Jason and I have been wanting an ottoman for our family room for a few months now and so yesterday we decided to make one!

Our family room has kind of a funky layout because it’s a long and skinny room with a bunch of obstacles (4 doors, stairs, windows, window seat, and a fireplace) blocking any form of a normal furniture arrangement. So, we have our couch facing the fireplace and the space between the couch and the fireplace leaves little room for an ottoman. Which is why we decided to make one, so we could make it any size we wanted. Plus we are thrifty :) Here is a picture of our space to kind of give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

At one point, I had stumbled across this tutorial from an awesome blog called little green notebook (if you haven’t read this blog, you must!!!) which gives step by step how to make an ottoman out of a coffee table. I thought this was a great idea and have been looking around at coffee tables for awhile but haven’t found the perfect coffee table that was within my small budget. This led me to building our own from scratch.

I (sort of) drew up some plans and presented them to Jason and he was down with the idea. I guess we both have been wishing we had a place to rest our feet! Here are my “plans”:

Haha! They look professional, don’t they?!

But, thankfully, my husband understood my chicken scratchings and got to work. The cool thing is we had all of the materials on hand except for the fabric! So this little project was virtually free. Amazing! (I was almost able to call it “don’t cost a dime”)

First, Jason made a box and underneath made a place for the hardware for the legs to screw into. Then because I was going to add buttons to make it tufted, he added holes for where the buttons would go. Here is a picture of the top:

While he was building the box, I was spray painting the legs (we had taken these and the hardware off of something we weren’t using):

Then, I sprayed the box using spray adhesive and put the foam on it. We used 1” foam because we happened to have some left over from another project and I didn’t want to buy more but a bit thicker would probably be nice. Although now that it’s done, I don’t think it matters much. Here you can see the box upside down while the adhesive is drying.

Jason added a little note to the underside of the box. I thought it was cute :)

By the way, “pressure” is his nickname for me. I don’t know why, neither of us can remember where is started from but possibly it came from precious. Yes, we are cheesy like that :)

Next, I cut the foam and wrapped the fabric and batting around it. One of our delays in building this sooner was I couldn’t decide on a fabric. I still can’t decide :) I really wanted something that was black and white but I couldn’t find anything in my price range that I liked. Finally, I picked something neutral that was cheap because I figured that when I found something I like better, I can just redo it. Seriously, this project is that easy. The fabric I ended up getting was on sale for $3! This whole project ended up costing us only three dollars since we had everything else on hand! Here is a picture of the underside with the fabric stapled in place:

And finally, a finished picture (with my lambs wool thrown over it):

Once I stretched the fabric over it I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tuft it. What do you think? I figured that I can always add the buttons later if I want so I will live with it like this and decided later! What do you think I should do? (A side note, in this picture, the couch is temporarily in a different location because of another project we are currently working on. More on that later.)

We finished it yesterday and immediately, our cat claimed it as her new nap spot. So, the jury is out as to whether or not we will be to actually use our new ottoman for ourselves :)