Take a seat!

Another project complete!  During our snow days, I was able to finish covering my kitchen table bench with the fabric that I used on these oven mitts.  I found it a while back and thought it was perfect to brighten up the kitchen! 

This is my plain-Jane bench before (no offense if you are named Jane, ok?)...

And now...

 

It wasn't a difficult process but I did learn some things along the way.  The first thing I learned - have a helper ready!  It was definitely a "two-man" show.  One person needs to hold and smooth the fabric and the other person will slap in those staples with a good staple gun!  

 

I purchased foam from JoAnns along with the fabric and some fairly thin vinyl.  I cut the foam lengthwise which just happened to be the perfect width for my bench leaving just a small piece left over.  I picked out the type that breathes and can be used indoors or outdoors because it seemed to hold its shape better.  Or so I thought.  More on that soon.  I cut each piece of foam diagonally at one end so that they overlapped about two inches, sat on top of each other smoothly, and left no visible mark between the two once the fabric was placed on top.

 

Adding the fabric went fairly quick.  Staple, smooth, tighten, smooth, staple, etc.  I finished the ends like a wrapped present.  When we were ready to add the vinyl (which had been purchased several months prior and had been stored in the studio under my counter space), we noticed it had too many wrinkles.  It was too thin and didn't hold a nice shape.  But, I had to temporarily cover  the bench with it since I couldn't leave fabric uncovered with a 4 year old and 8 year old in the house!  Disaster.  So, it was just stapled on loosely.  That drove me crazy because it kept coming loose.  After repeatedly yelling at the kids to pull it straight, I finally lost it one night and wrapped one end in blue painters tape to hold it in place!  Yeah, so unlike me.  But, better than having to replace the fabric!

I went back to JoAnn's (awww, too bad for me!) and purchased a heavier mil of vinyl.  MUCH better!  Ready to lay on the new vinyl?  Nope.  Since we had used the bench for several weeks, the foam had settled some and when we tried to attach the vinyl, it smooshed the fabric down and made a crease.  Not pleasing.  So, we pulled out the staples and re-stapled the fabric on each side to tighten it up a bit.   In the end, it all turned out to be a good thing.

We then stapled the vinyl on.  It holds up well and wipes up quite nicely!  Yay!  So that's my "Upholstery 101" for the day.

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