Winter Pinterest Challenge: A Fabric Ottoman

Ok, today is the day - time to share our Pinterest Challenge projects!  I'm so excited to see what everyone has done!  We totally took on something we have never tried before so let me get to sharing..

At first I was totally focused on doing some sort of organization type project - since we have been all about that around here lately.  But then, we got a wild whim and decided to just try something we have never done - build a piece of furniture....a fabric ottoman to be exact.  It was actually a lot of fun, not too difficult, we learned a lot and I enjoyed working on the project together with Justin.  This was totally a tag-team effort...with a lot of the effort being on Justin's end of things :).  Someone has to pick out fabric though right?

So here are my pinspiring pinspirations...

I totally love both of these!  The first one is from West Elm and its awesome but I don't have $400 to spend on an ottoman right now.  I love the idea of using an old coffee table for the base of the ottoman done by Meredith from the Not So Newlywed blog but we didn't have a coffee table or have time to try and find something that would work for our room.   So, we just decided to build it from scratch. I feel like we kind of just made this up as we went along but somehow it worked out - thank goodness.  I would not say our method was perfect or the outcome was perfection but like I said, it was fun tackling something new together.

Here is what we did:

First we determined the size we wanted to build our ottoman...I needed visual aid for sizes and laying out tape on the floor totally helped me.

Next we purchased our materials and began measuring and cutting. We bought a heavy duty piece of reinforced plywood and measured and cut it to the right size (this was going to be our base).  We made ours 3'x3'.  We used a laser level to get our edge straight and Justin cut everything off.

Then we used two by fours and cut those into smaller square blocks to add a little extra height and stability to the legs and base and nailed those to the plywood.

Next came the cutting and glueing of the foam down to our plywood.  We bought our foam at Joanne fabrics.  We laughed because they cut it for you at the store with what looks like an electric turkey carving knife.  So when we got home the best we could mimic was a bread knife - and it worked.  After the foam was glued down we covered it with fabric batting - stapling it around the entire base and then covered that with our fabric.  I just used a staple gun and made sure everything was pulled tight and even and that the fabric was straight.  Oh, the fabric I used for this project is actually a shower curtain that I found at Target!  I loved the ikat print so I went with it and its a pretty durable fabric as well.

I think one of the toughest parts of this project was keeping Silas from jumping/sitting on it while we were working.  He was so excited and enjoyed helping.  I think all of his cars and animals also had an adventure on it during the building process.  I have a feeling this ottoman will be used for many more car and train expeditions.

Ok, back to the project - we nailed another block to the corners base to give it more height, drilled in the holes for the legs and screwed the legs in.  We were getting close to being finished.  Next, we added a piece of trim around all of the edges to just finish it out a bit.

Finally, I remembered that I needed to paint the legs - so I actually did this last, which worked out fine.  It might would have been slightly easier to do this before you screw them in.

We love the result!  We also love that it only took us a day - and that was including shopping for all of the materials.

We have small house and limited seating so adding a few more spots to sit when we have a big crowd is nice.  Our students come over a lot and usually end up on the floor so we are hoping this will give us a few more spots for group time, bible studies and whatever else. Plus Silas has been calling it his big chair so it has already gotten plenty of action.  We loved the feeling of accomplishment after we finished.  Justin declared that he was going to build a sofa next - I said maybe we should try something like shelves.  This has definitely got us ready for the next project!

Don't forget to check out Katie, Sherry and Michelle today!  They have some awesome projects they are sharing - you don't want to miss them!!

Now comes the part where you share your amazing projects too!

- If you have already blogged about it just link up your projects below! 

1.  Click on the "add your link" button

2.  Add the url of your specific post

3. Type in the name or description of your project in the "name" blank

We'd love for you to link back over to our projects within your own post- (here's Sherry's, Katie's and Michelle's)

*Also remember to link back to your inspiration project found on pinterest and to link back to the original source so they also get some love too!

We can't wait to see the amazing projects you guys have been working on!