Bench for our Master Bedroom

A couple years ago I bought a cheap, ugly old coffee table on craigslist. It's about 5' long, which ended up being too long for our living room. It is solid wood and its length made it just right for use as a bench, so I moved it upstairs and put it at the foot of our bed. 

Once we moved, I finally got going on the makeover. I started by screwing some feet to the legs to make the bench a little taller. The shapes don't match completely, but they're as close as I could get.

I used it to support some wood I painted, but I knew the top would get covered, so I wasn't too worried about it

I mixed up some light blue chalk paint and gave the bench a couple coats.

I brought the bench upstairs, intending to add a cushion. Which of course didn't happen for about a year.

In my recent push to finish projects upstairs, I decided to finally finish the bench. Unfortunately, this meant I first needed to repaint it. Once I painted the master bedroom light blue gray and brought in blue bedding and a rug with light blue in it, the bench just didn't look right- too many shades of blue. 

hard to tell in this light, but this just wasn't working

So instead of blue, I went with light gray- the same light gray chalk paint I used on the nightstand. After two coats of paint, a little distressing since the bench is a bit beat-up, and a coat of wax, I got to work on the cushion. 

I bought the foam on sale at JoAnns forever ago, so all I had to do was cut it down a smidge to fit the bench top. Part of the reason it took me so long to do the cushion is that it took me quite awhile to find an electric knife that I could use on the foam. Once I finally found one, I'd started on other projects and the electric knife sat on a shelf, unused.

The electric knife made short work of the trimming, and then I grabbed a piece of 1/4" plywood from my stash. I wrapped the foam and plywood in batting, and then in fabric, securing them in place with my staple gun. 

I wanted to make it a tufted bench, but had problems getting the holes lined up. Thinner foam might have been a little bit easier? Or drilling holes in the foam as well as the wood? In any case, after a couple failed tries, I decided it was not going to be a tufted bench after all. Instead I secured the cushion to the bench by screwing some screws in from the bottom of the bench and into the plywood under the cushion. Sooo much quicker and easier :)

I hauled it back upstairs, and I was done. The lighting makes it difficult to tell, but it really does look a lot better. The light gray blends in a lot easier than the previous light blue-that-was-a-different-shade-of-blue-from-everything-else-in-the-room.

The real reason I've hung onto this bench- aren't the corner details great?