A Little Project: DIY Window Seat

Nick has been working late pretty much every night for the last 3 weeks...and a girl can only read so many books (especially when she's in a bit of a reading slump -- more on that later). Anyway, as I've been clearing out our home of stuff not going to New Mexico with us, I came across a little shelf in the garage, decided it was serving no practical purpose and decided to re-purpose it. This is what I came up with:

And this is what it looked like before:

 My thought was that if I'm going to try my hand at upholstery, I wanted it to be a no regret situation, just in case it went south. So this is actually a Walmart shelving unit we bought years ago for our specific needs and has been collecting dust and junk in our garage since we moved to our condo. If I ended up destroying it, nothing lost!

Which brings me to what I did and how I did it. Well, I followed this tutorial which was featured here and then I adapted it to my needs (like sanding everything down and then painting the unit because there was scuffs and chips and exposed particle board on the bottom of each shelf and the unit itself...we're cheap like that).

About the paint: I got a quart of Glidden Smooth Stone in Satin from Home Depot which ran me about $13. I wanted the color to have both grey and cream in it so it would mesh with whatever room we put it in (and there's quite a bit left in the can). I also took the 1/2 yard of fabric I got at Hobby Lobby for $2 so I could see them side by side.

The rest of the project was just like the tutorial, except I did end up buying the 1" thick roll of 6' long foam from Hobby Lobby, and using my 40% off coupon it ran me like $11. So the total cost for the project ended up being about $30, which I can do on my budget. Plus, I'm just pretty excited about how it turned out!

I know it's nothing really to write home about, but it filled two needs in our house (de-cluttering the garage and a small place for a few books in Alexa's room). It also filled a creativity and exploration bug in me, so now I'm cured for a while (until we move into a new place hopefully). Plus, with all that extra foam, it looks like I'm going to have to try another upholstery project!!

And now I can say I pretty much can woman-handle a drill. BAM!

AND I also proved once again that Pinterest can actually be a useful endeavor! YAY Pinterest!

(Speaking of...did you see our new social media buttons I put up on our sidebar?? Now we're a little social!)