Thursday, October 27, 2011

Super Easy Ottoman Tutorial!

Today I am posting a super fun and easy tutorial for an ottoman my husband and I just made that I will also be sharing on this cute girl's blog tomorrow.  You've gotta check her blog out too BTW, she's adorable!
   
K ottomans?  The ones I saw in stores are so dang expensive and not that cute.  So we thought, why not make one exactly how we want it?  
It was cheap, easy, and we love it!

So here we go....
What you'll need:
Scissors, staple gun, staples, screws, fabric (dimensions of fabric will depend on how big your coffee table is), measuring tape...
...razor blade, glue gun, and a saw (not pictured).
You'll also need a base of an old coffee table...
Plywood (cut to the dimensions of the top of your coffee table)...
And poly foam, make sure the dimensions can be cut to equal the size of your plywood.  We got two packages of this so there would be enough for two layers.  Our coffee table is huge, so you may only need one package of this.  
 First, lay the plywood on top of the coffee table making sure that it is the same size.  If your coffee table is rounded on the corners like ours was, you will need to saw the edges of the plywood into a curve to match the coffee table.  If it's just square you may be fine not to saw at all.  
It should look like this.
 If it matches up well, take the plywood off the table, lay it on the ground, and start matching the poly foam up to it so there's padding covering all of the plywood.  You'll probably need to cut the poly foam and lay it down in pieces in order to cover all of the plywood.  Like a puzzle, get it?  Like I said, we did two layers of poly foam, so if you want your ottoman really plush, do two layers which will probably call for two packages of the poly foam.  We even left a bit of an overhang of poly foam over the edges of the plywood so the edges are all comfy and soft.   
 Once it's all matched up, hot glue the poly foam to the plywood, and if you're doing two layers of poly foam, glue the second layer to the first layer so it's all secured down and tight.  The reason you are doing this is so when you flip the plywood upside down, the pieces stay where you want them.
 Once you've glued everything tightly down, lay your fabric down right side facing the floor, tip your plywood upside down being very careful your poly foam stays in place, and lay it on top of the fabric.
 Once you have laid it down, grab the edges of the fabric, stretch REALLY tight, and staple the fabric down to the plywood.  You will move around the entire piece of the plywood doing this.  The key really is to pull the fabric extremely tight.  If you don't, there will be little ripples in your ottoman which you don't want.  Maybe you do, if you do, don't pull it tight ;)
 Once you are done it should look something like this!


Flip it over, set it on top of the base of the coffee table, screw the base of the table into the plywood from underneath so it's secure and tight.
And wala, you are done!
 
Pretty fun huh?
Now go try it and please email me at rolleduppretty@gmail.com if you have ANY questions.  I would love to hear how this turned out for you too, so if you decide to do it, send me the pictures!  That would be so fun to see what you did, I could created a post about everyone's! :)