DIY Cushioned Ottoman

Buying a home in the Denver housing market (crazy pants) is hard enough, but after we finished with the hunting and purchase process that took most of the fall we were left with the challenge of furnishing the house.

Our family room was somewhat of a tricky area to figure out, with only one direction th e furniture could go and very specific dimensions that didn’t seem to correspond to the typical size of sectional sofas.

After several weeks of Craiglisting, we found a black faux leather sectional that SOMEHOW fit exactly in the space, like it had been custom made for that wall. We totally lucked out on that purchase.

The black color really dominated the room, and we needed to find some way to add color and function with an ottoman. Starting back with searching for something we could purchase pre-made, it looked like our best option for an ottoman was going to be black as well. The few and far between colored options looked like they were going to cost more than the entire sectional had cost via craigslist.

I’d heard about people who created their own tufted ottoman using coffee tables and decided to see what I could wrangle together. For $20 I snagged an old [extremely heavy] wooden table that was exactly the size I wanted to use for the ottoman.

The lip around the edge looked like it would be the perfect place for staples and while I was initially looking for something with legs that would come off I was hopeful that I could still hide the raw edges of the upholstery.

Finding a padded cushion that was the correct size was a lot harder than locating a coffee table. Most craft stores go up to 24″ wide, but we needed 36″ x 36″ to completely pad the entire top in one piece. Luckily Foam Factory provides custom cut pieces of foam and shipped out the cushion in less than a week. Shipping included this was the most expensive piece of the project, and if I could do it over again I would have selected a larger width of foam than the 2″ deep option we selected.

Next up was painting the legs (I used Rustoleum furniture lacquer) and marking where the buttons needed to go on the cushion. At this point, I was using the nails to mark the locations and honestly this didn’t work super great. After the fact, everything slide around and it would have been easier if I had pinned the vinyl to the cushion before starting to mark the official locations.

Once all the locations were marked I had to flip the cushion over and sew the oversized buttons on to where they belonged. I’m certain there is an easier way to do this, but I wanted to make sure that they were super secure and short of nailing the cushion into the table top and then using snap on buttons this seemed like the best solution. Make sure you use furniture thread for this step. Its a lot stronger and can put up with more resistance.

Attaching the vinyl & cushion to the table using furniture tacks was the hardest part of this project. Again, if we had a table with removable legs this would have been ALOT easier because you could just staple where you can’t see and tack for decoration. Our tacks needed to be both decorative AND functional.

Remember that awesome lip that I thought would be a great place for tacks? Yea… about that. It ended up being too small for a normal hammer and a tack hammer meant that you had to hold it, slam in the tack and somehow avoid your fingers… all in very small space. [Action shot 2 above] We tried that method for a couple of hours and just when I was about to give up I used the drill and started making pilot holes for the tacks. This sped the process up and helped ensure that I finished the ottoman this century.

The last step was cutting off the excess vinyl. As a result of the way the original table was constructed, there was no way to get a clean edge that you wouldn’t see, so we did our best to make it smooth and even.

Costs for this project 

Coffee Table – $20 from Craigslist
Vinyl Fabric – $25 from Joannes
Upholstery Tacks – $6 from Joannes
Buttons – $8 from Joannes
Spray Paint – $4 from Home Depot
Cushion Foam – $35 from Foam Factory

Total: $63

Finished Family Room Decor

I’m really happy with how this room came out. The teal accent pillows, ottoman and curtains really do a great job of bringing light into the room and making it feel inviting and modern.