Well, enough about that. There is so much I have yet to post. I need to catch up on things like my daughter's 6th birthday spa party (which happened in April mind you). But today I am going to post about a project I just finished.
Lately, my husband and I have been obsessed with pallets! Just like you see all over Pinterest, pallet projects have become somewhat of a huge trend in the DIY world. Guess it has to do a lot with free wood and a lot of imagination. So far, my hubby and I have worked together on 3 pallet projects including an outdoor coffee table, a new, huge dining table, and an ottoman for the living room.
(Please excuse the terrible phone photos)
The one I'm going to post about today is the ottoman. Of course I followed a pin because I'm totally obsessed with DIY thanks to this ever-consuming go-to social media site. However, as with everything, I tried to do things just slightly different and in my own way...kind of.
I'll start with the supplies you need (the amount and cost of supplies greatly depends on how big your pallet is going to be):
1 pallet (size of your choice) - free
egg crate foam - $21 for a twin sized piece on sale (Joann Fabric)
batting - $4.19/yd on sale (Joann Fabric)
upholstery fabric - $8/yd on sale (Joann Fabric)
fiberboard/plywood - $9 for 4' x 8' (Home Depot)
buttons - $8.99/12 (Etsy)
legs/top plates - $20 for 4 of each (Home Depot)
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My total: approximately $85.00
The first step I did was to sand down the pallet. Some thought it was kind of pointless, but my particular pallet had been sitting in some dirt in all kinds of summer rains and had some mud and splinters sticking out from everywhere. Just because it was ugly, yes, I took my hubby's sander to it and cleaned it up. The wood itself looked great once I was done. Then I measured and cut 2 pieces of fiberboard to the size of the pallet (1 for the top and 1 for the bottom). Once cut, I nailed the bottom piece on with little nails I had on hand for hanging pictures. Note: the boards are to give you a flatter surface to work with so you have something to tuft to and nail the upholstery too. You'll see what I mean as you continue. The pallet is really just a base to start your work with.
Next, I measured where my buttons would go for tufting and drilled 2 tiny holes at each spot in order for me to sew them in place.
After all of that, I took my top piece of fiberboard and and layered it on top of (in order from the bottom) the fabric, batting, and foam. I used Tacky glue (instead of spray adhesive because I had it on hand and wanted to save a little money) to glue the foam to the fiberboard. Now, keep in mind that the foam was cut to the same size as the fiberboard. The batting and fabric were both cut large enough to go down and around to the bottom of the pallet once the top is attached. The amount you need will depend on how thick your pallet and boards are.
Now, this is the hard part. The tufting. I have never tufted before and the pin that I linked to above also provides links on tufting tutorials, but I just used what I knew about sewing buttons to do the tufting. I did not purchase upholstery needles (again trying to cut costs), but they would have been really helpful as my needles didn't necessarily go through all of the materials unless squished...yes squished. It is also difficult trying to find the holes through all that material. Everything I have done up until this point was fast and fairly easy. I think it took all of an hour to do it all...but this took the rest of the night. And I called it a night once I finally got all 11 buttons on. I just sewed the buttons on as you normally would...only I pulled it tight in order to create the bulges. You definitely want to use a thick upholstery-like thread for this process. And even then you want to double it up as you sew. I had some thread on hand for sewing my husbands uniforms. It is fairly thick and did the job.
After some sleep, I got back on the horse and finished up what I started. I added more foam to each of the sides of the pallet (though I had to undo my upholstering later on once I realized that I should have added board to the open sides because you could feel it through the fabric and also add even more foam to the corners). This wasn't difficult just a pain since it was all trial and error and I didn't notice how much could actually be felt until all the fabric was already staple on. Once I had the foam surrounding all the sides, I took the tufted top and nailed it onto the pallet. From there, I turned the whole thing upside down and went to town with the staple gun. Wa-la...the top is all done.
But wait, we're not done! I took the top plates and screwed them into the bottom...OK...this is where my hubby helped me because for whatever the reason, the self started screws it came with didn't want to start for me! Anyway, I shoved them as far into the corner as I could measuring each to make sure it was equal...inside of the stapled fabric. Note: You want to trim away as much of the fabric on the bottom as you can without possibility of the fabric tearing and coming apart.
Once those were secured, I took a plain white piece of fabric I already had, nothing special and covered the entire bottom, even covering the plates I had screwed on. This hides all the ugliness and also reinforces the other materials as you are adding that many more staples and also covering up anything little children or pets can get to.
Wondering how I'm going to get the legs on? Well, I'm going to cut holes right where the legs are going to screw into the plates of course! That's what I did and they went in just fine. Get them as tight as you possibly can and you're all done!!! *Patting my shoulder now.*
Only took 2 days and I've got a new piece of furniture that is now my children's favorite place to sit and watch tv...even take naps. Haha. It's a custom piece without the custom price and the pride that you did it all yourself. As you can see we went for kind of a modern look with a vintage feel (buttons). That is what we hope to accomplish with the new house we are looking to buy when we get back to Hawai'i. I'll post more about how we decorate and other DIY projects we do to make it our own.
Enjoy making your ottoman!!! I'd love to see what you can accomplish with pallets in other ways as well!!!
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