New Fabric for an Old Ottoman

This is an old post, from my old website, about my old ottoman. The ottoman was old and badly worn, but some new fabric gave it a whole new look in under a hour. A year later and it still looks awesome.



I have 3 different projects in the works - all waiting for Spring to hit, and the snow to take a hike. Until that happens I can't get outside to paint! SO, in lieu of holding my breath, and risking imminent death, I thought I'd post this about recovering an old ottoman (it was so old it could be from the Ottoman Empire - get it? I'm so sorry.)

Anyway, here was the problem with the old ottoman:



(Yes, sadly I didn't just throw it away! In fact I used it! )



All four corners had split, and although I had sewn the edges back together before, years of the "little darlings" jumping on the furniture, had not helped any.  It was definitely time to either re-cover the thing or buy a new one.  At that point in time, I'd rather cover it than spend the money on a new ottoman, but I thought, "we'll see how it looks after the restoration".

Taking a good look at the ottoman, I realized that it wasn't in terrible condition structurally, and, I really was too lazy to didn't even need to take off the old fabric.

First, I unscrewed the legs, which took all of about 23 seconds:



Then, using the utility knife, I plucked the buttons off of the top of the ottoman - another 17 seconds.  This was my kind of work!

I laid out the fabric, wrong side up, which is a leather-like  material (sounds so much better than pleather).  And then plopped the ottoman in the center, upside down.



I made sure the edges wrapped up and around the ottoman, with about 3" spare on the underside.  I pulled the fabric taught, and started stapling all the way around, keeping it tight.  After I got staples around all four sides, I went back and filled in with staples, about 2 inches apart.





When I got to the corners, I spent what seemed like several hours (in reality it was 10 minutes) trying to get the "pleats" to look nice. With limited patience, here is what I said to myself: "Oh for goodness sake, just staple the dang thang and get this over with!".  And so I did.   I used the handy utility knife to cut the excess fabric, and I screwed the legs back on.  Presto!

After spending only about 1 hour on this I was very happy with the results.

(Later that year... the ottoman still looks great. I'm happy I covered it, and I still like the "pleather" fabric.)