Footstool Refashion

Back in May, I updated our bedroom. I got the idea from one of my sisters who refinished and decorated a bedroom in my dad's house after moving back temporarily after a breakup. It looked so cute! It really hit me how much a pretty environment affected my mood.

Our bedroom was pretty bare and unattractive. We had a couple dressers that were my husband's as a kid, a couple nightstands with the lamps from his childhood bedroom, a bed with a mission-style headboard, and a couple of tall and cheap bookshelves. The only decorations were a mirror above the long dresser, a print of a boat and lake above the bed, and a watercolor of a barn that my mom had painted. We did have blinds on the windows but those were never pulled down.

I got rid of one of the bookshelves; it fell apart as I moved it. I got rid of one of the dressers. I hung iron-like rods and long, flowy, gauzy white curtains that I got cheap from an outlet store. Then I went to TJ Maxx and got fake flowers and new bedside lamps. I grabbed an old chair from my parents' house--there is an overflow of furniture in that house--and a lamp from my daughter's old bedroom. I added a rug under the bed from Home Depot.

The room was looking much more cozy. Next came a blue shag rug from Rugs.com. ​

Finally, I wanted a footstool in front of the chair. What I really wanted was a proper classic upholstered wooden footstool. ​

But what I saw at TJ Maxx were poufs like this one, and and I thought they'd be okay. Only these were sick expensive and to save money I thought I could make one. 

I had a nice bit of quilting cotton with the perfect pattern and another bit from which I could make some piping. The part that gave me trouble was the stuffing. I first filled it with poly stuffing, but it wasn't dense enough. Next I added bean bag chair pellets, mixing them in with the stuffing. Well, it was denser and I called it quits, but I didn't like how squishy and misshapen it looked and how much noise it made when you touched it. 

I was planning on constructing my own wooden footstool out of wooden parts from Home Depot and then refashioning the fabric into the pillow top, but I had too many project pans in the fire to get time for that. 

But then I passed this little find in a trash pile...

I took it apart and noted how it was put together. It was thin board screwed into the top of the frame, and on the board was a loose pillow covered in the burlap fabric, which was stapled to the board. Thin strips of batting were laid on top of the pillow to round it out, and a piece of muslin covered the burlap edges on the underside of the board, so it all looked finished and nice even though it was getting screwed into the frame and would never be seen by anyone.

I began to reconstruct it, first throwing out all the cloth and batting materials because they were disgusting and dirty. I made a new inner pillow out of an old sheet, filled it with a rectangle of high-density foam, and padded it with batting. I cut up the old pouf fabric down to the new size I needed and resewed the piping to the top. I stretched the fabric over the pillow and stapled it into the board. I tacked down a new piece of muslin. 

Meanwhile, my husband cut the legs down for me and painted it. I woke up this morning and he asked me how it looked. He had screwed the top onto the frame and placed it in the room while I was sleeping, but I had walked right by it when I got up. 

It looks fabulous!