coffee table-turned padded bench

I found this little gem for cheap on craigslist late last summer. Wasn't she a beaut?

The best (worst) part was, I didn't know exactly what it was. A little too tall for a coffee table, too low for a sofa table, too big for an end table, too fill-in-the-blank for any kind of table that my house currently needed.

Still, I loved the two large drawers, the sturdy construction, and the details.

First stop: paint. It's a big enough piece that any kind of bright, awesome color (say, magenta or chartreuse) would've been a little overkill. I went with a classic military blue -- dark and grounded and colorful but not overpowering. (I find navy hues to be great that way.) Some round antique-rubbed brass knobs and BAM. Done.

(Pretend you're looking at a photo of the above table in blue here.)

Not to be all anticlimatic at this point, but we had a hard time figuring out what to DO with it. We tried it as a coffee table, but, although the drawers were nice to hide TV remotes and old popcorn bowls on the fly (what, you don't do that?), the table sits a few inches uncomfortably higher than the cushions on our couch. We tried pushing it against a wall to serve as a kind of console, but it was pointlessly long and too low for that...thus too tempting for little bodies to top with miscellaneous junk that no one wants to put away (what, you don't have that?).

Then I thought a padded bench would be perfect. We were in the process of replacing our master bed's old pillowtop mattress anyway, so I simply separated the pillowtop part from the rest of the mattress before hauling it off to the landfull. The foam was dense and a perfect thickness. Who loves repurposing stuff slated for Trashville? Two thumbs says: this girl.

I cut the foam to size, wrapped it with thin padding, stuck it on top of the table, and covered with upholstery fabric. For a final (although hardly noticeable) touch, I covered the rough stapled edges of the fabric with cream grosgrain ribbon.

The bench now sits in our living room.*

 

*Addendum: Strike that. The bench now lives in our master bedroom at the foot of our bed. More on that later.**

**Addendum-dum: Strike THAT. The bench now sits under a window in our master bedroom. Because I'm fickle like that.

{shared Miss Mustard Seed, here, here, and here}