Before/After: Wood Slab to Coffee Table

Pretty excited about how great this turned out!

My original Saturday plans were to work on making another shirt, put the finishing touches on a filing cabinet I've been re-doing, and watching some Netflix. However, after eating breakfast with my roommates and chatting about the downstairs area in our house I decided I wanted to turn our current coffee table (piece of wood on cinder blocks) into a padded/more colorful coffee table.

Spruce: A Step-By-Step Guide to Upholstery & Design - $22.14

I got the book listed above as a Christmas present for myself, and not only is it amazing, but it had a great tutorial for a tufted ottoman. After talking things over with my roommates we decided that we didn't want to do tufting because we wanted to keep the coffee table as a flat surface to place things on besides our feet. After looking up color schemes and brainstorming what we wanted the downstairs area to look like I took off to JoAnn's and Home Depot to get the supplies I needed. I'm putting all of the other pictures and my step by step process after the link!



I got started by wiping down the piece of wood, once it was clean and dry I sprayed the top of it with adhesive spray. After the spray had gotten nice and tacky I put a piece of 3 inch foam down and pressed down to make sure it was sticking onto the wood well.

Getting a the camera a little blurry and a little dirty, whoops!
After the foam was secure I sprayed some more adhesive and then wrapped around a layer of cotton batting which gives the piece more puff and smooths out the edges of the foam. The last step in padding was a layer of Dacron over the cotton batting, which again smooths everything out and also hides the color of the green foam from being seen through your fabric. I wanted everything secure before i put the fabric on top so I left the edges of the Dacron long and stapled it to the underside making sure to smooth out the top and the sides as I was working.

It's a little blurry but you guys get the idea

The next step was sewing the cover. I had pre-measured the piece of wood and added 6 inches to my measurements because I knew the foam and padding would raise the amount of wood I had to cover. After the padding was secure I remeasured. I could have gone about this next part two ways. The first which would have been simpler, would be to drape the fabric over the piece of wood and staple it down that way while folding the corners. I however wanted to added piping to the top and the bottom seams and so I chose to cut out individual pieces for each part. You end up assembling a 3D rectangle without a bottom. I measured the top, the length and height of the longer sides, and the length and height of the shorter sides. I then cut out my fabric as follows: 1 top piece, 2 length pieces, 2 shorter side pieces. Sewing this together was a breeze. I simply placed my top piece right side up, a piece of piping along the edge, and one of the length pieces along the length edge right side down, and then I sewed it together. I repeated that same layering process with all of the sides. After all of the sides were sewn to the top I sewed the side edges together, and then tested out the fit on the padded piece of wood. Luckily I didn't need to make any adjustments so I got right to stapling.


After it was stapled won nice and smooth I stapled on the bottom layer of piping which you can see in the picture above on the right. The last step was a dust cover layer underneath to hide the piece of wood from showing.

I was so excited that I was almost done I rushed and didn't smooth this out so well. Don't be like me.

I brought it inside right after and placed it on these cinder blocks. In the future I might add legs to it, but for right now the cinder blocks are sturdy, cheap, and don't look too bad.

 

All in all it was a great way to spend my Saturday and I love the way it turned out, not to mention it made me really pumped for all of my big re-upholstery plans this summer. I'm planning on re-doing my couch and my roommates couch and whatever else I can find! I'm going to try and make another Renfrew Shirt this week and get that filing cabinet done I was talking about earlier so I have more to share with you all.

Pretty excited about how great this turned out!

My original Saturday plans were to work on making another shirt, put the finishing touches on a filing cabinet I've been re-doing, and watching some Netflix. However, after eating breakfast with my roommates and chatting about the downstairs area in our house I decided I wanted to turn our current coffee table (piece of wood on cinder blocks) into a padded/more colorful coffee table.

Spruce: A Step-By-Step Guide to Upholstery & Design - $22.14

I got the book listed above as a Christmas present for myself, and not only is it amazing, but it had a great tutorial for a tufted ottoman. After talking things over with my roommates we decided that we didn't want to do tufting because we wanted to keep the coffee table as a flat surface to place things on besides our feet. After looking up color schemes and brainstorming what we wanted the downstairs area to look like I took off to JoAnn's and Home Depot to get the supplies I needed. I'm putting all of the other pictures and my step by step process after the link!



I got started by wiping down the piece of wood, once it was clean and dry I sprayed the top of it with adhesive spray. After the spray had gotten nice and tacky I put a piece of 3 inch foam down and pressed down to make sure it was sticking onto the wood well.

Getting a the camera a little blurry and a little dirty, whoops!
After the foam was secure I sprayed some more adhesive and then wrapped around a layer of cotton batting which gives the piece more puff and smooths out the edges of the foam. The last step in padding was a layer of Dacron over the cotton batting, which again smooths everything out and also hides the color of the green foam from being seen through your fabric. I wanted everything secure before i put the fabric on top so I left the edges of the Dacron long and stapled it to the underside making sure to smooth out the top and the sides as I was working.

It's a little blurry but you guys get the idea

The next step was sewing the cover. I had pre-measured the piece of wood and added 6 inches to my measurements because I knew the foam and padding would raise the amount of wood I had to cover. After the padding was secure I remeasured. I could have gone about this next part two ways. The first which would have been simpler, would be to drape the fabric over the piece of wood and staple it down that way while folding the corners. I however wanted to added piping to the top and the bottom seams and so I chose to cut out individual pieces for each part. You end up assembling a 3D rectangle without a bottom. I measured the top, the length and height of the longer sides, and the length and height of the shorter sides. I then cut out my fabric as follows: 1 top piece, 2 length pieces, 2 shorter side pieces. Sewing this together was a breeze. I simply placed my top piece right side up, a piece of piping along the edge, and one of the length pieces along the length edge right side down, and then I sewed it together. I repeated that same layering process with all of the sides. After all of the sides were sewn to the top I sewed the side edges together, and then tested out the fit on the padded piece of wood. Luckily I didn't need to make any adjustments so I got right to stapling.


After it was stapled won nice and smooth I stapled on the bottom layer of piping which you can see in the picture above on the right. The last step was a dust cover layer underneath to hide the piece of wood from showing.

I was so excited that I was almost done I rushed and didn't smooth this out so well. Don't be like me.

I brought it inside right after and placed it on these cinder blocks. In the future I might add legs to it, but for right now the cinder blocks are sturdy, cheap, and don't look too bad.

 

All in all it was a great way to spend my Saturday and I love the way it turned out, not to mention it made me really pumped for all of my big re-upholstery plans this summer. I'm planning on re-doing my couch and my roommates couch and whatever else I can find! I'm going to try and make another Renfrew Shirt this week and get that filing cabinet done I was talking about earlier so I have more to share with you all.