A Bench & Vanity Remake

Today we have some Simple ways to bring ugly furniture you try to hide into pieces that you want to show off.  Two pieces coming at you today.  Both are antique in nature and both required some sprucing up.  First is our sweet little bench we've had for years, it's seen better days.  And next is our cute antique vanity that Justin got for me a few years back - it's in a major need of a paint job and maybe even a little knob upgrade.  Here's a before pic of how it was in our guest room last week:

Yes, that's jungle safari parrot fabric covering this bench.  No comment.

Up close shots of the bad paint job on the vanity-

Ok, so first let's start with the bench.  I immediately ripped off the fabric and to my surprise revealed a cute toile fabric print underneath, not too bad.  I happen to really love toile.  But, it was looking pretty old and dingy and just didn't look that good.  

So I was off to search for a new fabric to cover the bench with.  I wanted something somewhat neutral and of course something reasonably priced.  I found a really great etsy site with a bunch of cute fabrics to choose from - Fabrics You Love - they are also very reasonably priced and I love supporting fellow etsy shop owners!  Here's a couple of the fabric I bought:

I decided to go with the striped fabric for this project and use the other print for a future project - both will be pieces used in the same room though so I love how they both share the same gray neutral tone.

Before I started on the reupholstering I decided to paint the bench a softer color.  I had a little paint leftover from Silas' room that worked perfectly - and you know how I love a free upgrade. (PS - It's Olympic zero VOC paint, in case anyone was wondering).

So reupholstering a bench like this is really rather easy.  After settling on a new fabric you just need a few tools, most importantly a staple gun.  I happen to love this simple tool.  Oh, also I decided to just recover over the existing toile fabric.  I could have ripped it off too but I guess I was lazy or wanted to make it harder for me - not sure which.  The striped fabric I used to recover wasn't not opaque enough so I needed a liner.  Luckily I just used a little curtain to back my bookcase with and had enough left over to use as a liner for this project.

A quick stapling of the curtain and I'm ready to cover with my new fabric.

To get a nice corner, just fold in your fabric - much like wrapping a present.

Reattach the seat portion back to the bench legs (mine just screwed back in) and that's it!  Such a simple project to brighten up a little piece of furniture!

Loving my neatly tucked in corners.

But wait, this post isn't over...maybe the most pictures ever in a post.  So I still needed to repaint our vanity and do something to the existing knobs.  

The knobs really weren't all that bad, I just wasn't feeling them in this room.  So a quick spray paint did the job.  I kept the vanity white - off the shelf Olympic paint and decided to keep the mirror unpainted.  This mirror is not the original mirror (although Justin was told that when he bought it - to his defense they were bought on different days - he received a call back from the shop owner a day after that he had "found" the mirror).  Either way, I like the way it looks.  Something about the wood and white work for me.

Still hasn't lost it's rustic charm, but it's much cleaner looking now with the new white coat of paint.

The new wall color and white trim look a thousand times better - just had to add that.

And now, all together...

Not a hugemungo difference but just enough to soften and clean everything up.  I love the clean and crisp look these pieces are now sporting.

Thanks for joining me today! 

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