Upholstered Ottoman

I came across this upholstered ottoman on Pinterest that really struck my fancy.  And I decided I needed something similar in my own home. We've had this old wooden coffee table that keeps going back and forth between the familyroom and the livingroom, depending on the age of our kids.  When they are toddling around and falling over and bumping their heads then it got moved to the livingroom. And moved back into the familyroom when we have guests over and need a place to put drinks and appies. 

The whole redesign of the familyroom has begun from a few months ago when we moved the ginormous IKEA toy shelf into the basement and re-claimed our familyroom as an "adult-friendly" space and not a playroom.

Then my in-laws bought me new kitchen dishes (Denby, Azure Coast....I LOVE them!!!), which got me thinking about a whole new color scheme for the kitchen/familyroom.  A sort of blue/teal/taupe/moss-green theme to match the dishes....yes, I'm basing the design scheme of two whole rooms on my gorgeous new coffee mugs, okay!

So we found this gorgeous fabric at Fabricland, on 50% off - score! as well as the materials needed (2" high-density foam and quilt batting, also 50% off!) And on my child-care swap day I set to making my ottoman.

How to make an upholstered ottoman:

What you'll need - an old coffee table, 2" high-density foam, quit batting, your fabric of choice, industrial staple gun.

1. Measure your coffee table in order to buy enough fabric.  Now I loved this fabric, but I wanted the lines to run lengthwise on the table....which meant that I had to sacrifice the fabric coming lower on the table than I originally wanted, as per the inspiration-picture.  Oh well. I still think it looks great!

2. You can have your foam cut to size at a specific foam store....but I got mine at a great discount so I had to cut it to size, myself.  A great tip is to use an electric bread-slicer if you have one.  Otherwise a really big pair of fabric scissors works.

3. Lay your fabric down on the ground, then a piece of quilt batting so it doesn't slide around, then your foam, and then lay your coffee table on top.  Take the extra time to really line it up well, I didn't use a spray adhesive because that stuff stinks and I was doing this in the house.  But if it's summertime, and you're outside and you want to use it, go right ahead!

4. Pull your fabric taught, and put a couple staples down. Then go over to the other side, and pull taught and put a couple staples down and then do all four sides with just a few staples.  Then you can go back to each side individually and pull tight and staple the all along each side.

5. Now you need to decide how you want to fold the corners.  Play around with a few different folds, I personally went with a tight hospital corner fold.

6. Trim the excess fabric so you don't see any hanging down....this is not as noticeable if you were stapling under the actual table, but because I was just doing the lip, I had to be very meticulous.

7. Turn your table back onto it's legs, position in the room, put your feet up and enjoy your new upholstered ottoman!


So far the kids have loved laying on it to watch tv, and to "play baby".  My 3 yr old jumps from it onto the couch like a superhero.....no, he's not "allowed" to do that...atleast not when daddy's home ;)

A fun, simple and relatively easy project to really change the look of a room!