upcycling – Something About Stephanie

I sometimes have visual ideas. I have so many ideas popping into my head all day long, I wish I could just record my internal thoughts like a DVR in real time and come back to them when I need to. Some of my ideas stick and most of them just leave my big, beautiful brain and I miss them, lol. So, for the ones that stick, I’ve begun to recreate them in a physical way.

One of my great ideas was to create a bench for my bedroom. We have a king-sized bed and there was a time when all four of us, myself, husband and two children, could fit in the bed comfortably. We evolved into a time when the kiddos had to go to the foot of the bed as a way to spread out and now, we’ve moved into a space where the kids are just too big to even be on the bed at the same time.

The bench needed to be a good size, stylish and cozy. I got inspired by an image of loafers. They just looked so good. What caught my eye were the fine hairs and splotchy spots. Beautiful browns and creamy cream. The soles of the loafers were the cherry on top of that Sunday, super structured, hard bottoms. I also peruse Etsy, often and I stumbled upon these really cool furniture legs. They made me thing, bubbles. We have a lot of clean lines throughout our home and it’s just time to switch things up. Its giving texture, its giving standalone piece that looks good in its place. I love it so much.

I took a trip to a leather goods store and found a spectacular cow hide similar to my muse. I ordered my legs and got down to business. I reached out to a local upholsterer and expressed my vision because I had never worked with leather and was a bit intimidated by the material. Side note, I mentioned making a tote bag in another post. I took the leftover material from the hide and made the tote out of that. I actually love working with leather more than any other material I’ve worked with and I plan to do more with it. I had a great experience with Jose but future projects I’ll be doing myself, for now. Jose did make my custom piece exactly the way I wanted it and I’m truly grateful for his expertise. The cushion came out perfect.

In my drawing the border had these lines and I needed to make it make sense in real life. So, to the hardware store I went. I found these thin, square, two ft long wooden sticks and I cut them down to just about in inch and a half, pieces that I then glued to the face of my precut plywood base of the bench. I eyeballed the spacing to give my hand crafted piece the imperfect look I’m always going for because what is perfect!? I then sanded, attached the legs and stained the base added the cushion and vwala, isn’t she pretty!?