A BRAND NEW LOOK

I hope you’re all having a great week! You may have noticed in my Fall Home Tour from last month, that I’ve updated our family room ottoman. You may also remember it was dark brown leather before and now it’s covered in a beautiful blue batik-inspired print fabric. Unfortunately, I don’t have a how-to for you today, but I can tell you it was very simple and extremely inexpensive to do!

We’ve had this piece for about 10 years and it has served us well! It’s the centrepiece of our family room, it’s cozy and comfortable. The size is perfect, 40″ square. The kids hang all over it, we all put our feet up on it, I can display beautiful objects on it and I can also stash stuff underneath when I need to!

I still need to paint them, but I also changed the feet to a turned foot rather than a straight contemporary style. You can see what I mean further down in this post.

I had been on the hunt for quite some time for fabric to either recover this piece or sew a slipcover for it. I was thinking of proceeding with the latter, with a straight skirt to the floor on all four sides and contrast piping. I wanted a chinoiserie feel (since I’m crushing all over anything chinoiserie these days). I had found many beautiful options from Tonic Living that I adored. The problem was that I couldn’t make up my mind and I really wanted to get this done! The look I wanted was also going to take me time to make and I am no seamstress, trust me! If I were to recover it, I possibly would have had to buy extra fabric and still sew a ‘box’ to fit over because of the size – some of the fabrics were not wide enough to wrap around.

My ‘study in blues’ arrangement.

I decided I was going to look for a shower curtain, since the fabrics are usually durable and a good heavy weight to cover this piece. One day in HomeSense I spotted this gorgeous blue patterned table cloth on markdown for $15! It wasn’t quite the look I wanted. BUT – it was blue (the palette I had in my mind), it cost almost nothing (total score!) and I figured if I didn’t like it who cares? At least I didn’t have to look at the brown leather anymore which I felt was visually weighing down our room.

Here’s what I mean about visual weight – the brown was just getting too heavy in here. I wanted  something brighter with added textural interest.

Too many dark elements in here – lots of black holes!

You can see very clearly how the original legs do not do the new fabric any justice whatsoever!

My pillows needed a pick me up as well – so I set out to find blue ones to tie it all together. Remember – I LOVE TO MIX PATTERN! If you don’t know this about me, you know now! So another print was in order here.

A nighttime shot. You can see how it needed another layer on the sofa.

Here’s the same view during the day, with my new blue Bouclair Maison pillows that I found for $24.99 each. I was a little hesitant to buy them as the color has a green undertone. I wasn’t sure if it would go with my new look, but I took the plunge and it’s  just perfect!

The facing sofa – this shot was taken on a different day so the colors are not quite the same here.

A close up of the ottoman styling, most of which I already had. My daughter spotted these mini ginger jars at HomeSense and insisted I get them! I’m so happy I did, they’re perfect!

Recovering it was very simple. I removed the legs (which unscrew), laid down the table cloth and flipped the ottoman upside down. I then centered it as best I could (it’s not totally perfect but that’s ok!) and proceeded to staple it underneath with a staple gun. Typically I would have used some light batting as well, but here I didn’t. I stapled each side in the centre to secure it from slippage as well as a few more staples along each edge.

At each corner, I carefully folded the fabric until I had the look of an inverted pleat. A little hard to see in this shot, but if you look carefully you can see the overlap. I then stapled all the way around, cut off any excess fabric and I was done! So simple. It took about an hour to do and now I have a brand new piece!

You can really see here how well the pillow color works together with it.

A view from the kitchen –  I love the pop of color, even from over here.

After I covered it, I didn’t love this look at all. I thought it was far to boho for my taste and it was not really the look I’d been wanting. It did have an eastern feel to it, however. AND it was blue with quite an interesting pattern. Once my husband changed the legs for me, the piece took on a completely different life and it really started to grow on me. I know I’ll change it some day, but for now it’s staying right where it is. xo