Thursday, January 6, 2011

Ottoman Transformation

When I recently slip covered my couch I knew I was going to have to re-do many other things in my family room. Here is the couch. I had a little bit of a hard time finding coordinating fabric I liked with the couch. The couch fabric is gray. What I have learned about gray is that gray has one of three undertones, purple, green, or blue. I learned this from a great blog called Colour Me Happy. To read more about gray click here.
My couch has a purple undertone. I looks great with purple, lavender, and yellow. I went to just about every fabric store in San Diego looking for coordinating fabric and struck out. I searched all the sale back rooms and remnant tables. I looked on line, but I struck out there too. Most of the fabric I found was either the wrong shade with the couch gray, or it was too girly, too old fashioned, too modern, too boring, or not practical for our lifestyle. I found what I liked, but getting it for a price I was willing to pay is the real trick. I did find some beautiful yellow and purple Ikat fabric at We-Are-Fabrics, but it was special order and ran about $53 to $100 a yard, with a two yard minimum. Not in my budget, especially when the dog might barf on it.

I found a durable inexpensive alternative at Home Goods, not an Ikat, but it looks great with the couch. I used it to tackle my next project, the dated brown ottomans. I purchased two of these ottomans, a matching couch, and two chairs from a designer sample sale about 7 years ago. They were dirt cheap and I needed furniture. We lived in this house for three years without living room furniture. I split the set up and used the two chairs and the ottomans in my family room. The couch is in the living room. I was never ecstatic about everything matching, but the furniture was well made, dog and kid proof, and cheap. All the pieces have held up very well.


The pieces have held up so well I haven't been motivated to update them.

Here is my first attempt at recovering the ottoman. Originally I just covered right over the old fabric. The new fabric is a reversible bedspread. Washable, durable, and fits in my limited budget. One side is a gray, tan, and yellow scrolly flower print and the other side is a geometric gray. I thought the scrolly side would hide dirt better, so I made the top slip cover cushion with that side of the bedspread.

I washed it in hot water and dried it on the hottest dryer setting to shrink it before I made the ottoman covers.


Not sure you can tell in these pictures?
I really didn't like how the wood looked next to the new fabric, so I started over.



On the second attempt I removed the old fabric. It had to be done because I was going to paint the wood.


Down to the foam.



On projects like these, I try to use leftover paint whenever possible. I unscrewed the bun feet from the bottom of the ottoman and painted the wood with two coats of dark gray paint. I mixed the paint using some black (leftover from the armour) and some white self priming paint I already had. I adding a touch of burnt umber Universal Tint to warm up the color

I made a glaze with the original gray color by adding more white and a little more burnt umber tint. Then I dry brushed the glaze over the gray to give the wood a more aged look. The blue drop cloth is distorting the gray color. It looks more blue in these pictures then it really is.



Nice buns!

Two coats of dark gray and one coat of dry brushed glaze.

I sanded the edges and polished the wood with some brown shoe polish to darken the exposed wood edges. I staple gunned the fabric on and added trim and nail heads. These nail heads are leftovers from my other projects like the pumpkins and the wall treatment in the bathroom and rotunda.


I added Velcro to the top and bottom of the cushion for easy cleaning. The top cushion is a slip cover that can be easily removed and thrown into the wash.

One project down, more to go.



I like it much better with the painted wood.


Next project...coordinating pillows.





























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