Beginner Friendly Way To Customize And Recover A Bench Seat

We were very fortunate recently to be given a piano from a co-worker of mine. It had originally belonged to one of his grandparents so it was an overwhelmingly generous gesture.

When we received the piano the bench was in perfect condition.

The bench isn’t something I would have chosen for our home but it does closely match the finish of the piano so until I find the perfect bench we will be keeping this one.

Unfortunately it didn’t take long for my cat to discover this unblemished piece of furniture and promptly went to work on it.

Thankfully the seat isn’t real leather.

The majority of damage is on one side and thankfully doesn’t go through and damage the pad under the fabric.

Originally I was hoping to just staple some medium weight upholstrey fabric over EVERYTHING and call it a day. But the damaged pleather created a very rough surface  and I was concerned that, even if I placed a heavier fabric over the seat,  you would be able to feel or still see the damaged fabric underneath. So I decided to just  to get rid of it altogether.

The first thing I did was remove the seat from from the bottom of the bench.

This was easily done with a screwdriver.

The pleather was quite a bit harder to remove from the seat.

I started by trying to remove the staples but they were either breaking or imbedded into the the particle board so far I couldn’t get to them.

I ended up carefully tearing the fabric off with the help of a screwdriver.

It ended up just a mess but I was still able to use it as a template when sizing and cutting the new piece of fabric.

The fabric I ended up using  to recover the bench was leftover medium weight upholstery fabric from a previous project on my blog. Click here to view.

I’d like to take credit for idea to use this fabric but it was my husbands. I had just finished venting about how I couldn’t figure out what to do about the bench seat and how I couldn’t stand looking at it any longer and my husband says how he thought the fabric I used to cover the couch cushions would look good. I knew he was right as soon as he said it:)

The foam cushion under the pleather was in perfect condition. I just left it in place and wrapped the new fabric around the board and stapled it on with my Ryobi staple gun.

I began by stapling down the center of each side pulling the fabric taught, then stapling down the opposite side, being careful not to stretch it.  I saved the corners until last.

I know there is a specific method to folding and afixing corners when covering furniture but for my project I did what I thought looked nice. I folded down the middle portion first then brought one side down then folded the opposite edge down over it so it created  little boxed corners.

The medium weight fabric was very nice to work with. It wasn’t to delicate and held up to the heavy duty staples needed to penetrate the particleboard.

The only thing I needed to buy to complete this project was a material that had some structure that could be stapled onto the underside of the seat to cover the edges of the fabric and the still exposed particleboard. Originally it was covered with what looked to be thick construction paper painted black on one side. I knew I could do better then that.

I made one trip out to Walmart and found something that would work perfectly!

This fabric I found is medium weight with two different sides. One side is black and weaved the other side is a lighter color, smooth and has somewhat of a sheen.  It is similar to pleather but lighter in weight. Either side would work to cover the underside of the bench but I chose the black, woven fabric to be the side you would see when the bench was open. I think it finishes off the look better.

I cut the piece to fit over the entire under area of the bench leaving an inch border around the perimeter. Since I was attaching the fabric with staples, I wanted to make sure they wouldn’t be seen if you were looking at the bench from the side.

Black staples would have been great to use for this but I didn’t have any and I wanted to keep this update as inexpensive as possible. The silver works fine and are only visible when the bench is open.

As I said this is a temporary update until I find something of better quality. I’m also leaving the color the way it is for the time being. This bench is made entirely out of particleboard and isn’t even painted.

• NOPE…It’s literally covered in paper that, I’m guessing, is supposed to look like wood. It’s very burgundy but does kind of resemble the finish on the piano. So for now I’m leaving it alone.
• The piano is definitely on my future to-do list

All that was left was to reattach the seat back to the bottom:)

Such an easy and fun update!

Here’s a look at the completed seat:)

I just love how the script on the fabric looks on the bench!

(I may not be able to stop myself from painting this bench while on the hunt for the new one)

 

Thank you for stopping by and reach out if you have any questions:)

Roni♥