Footstool Fix - Upcycled Denim and Mattress Foam

13 Materials
2 Days
Medium

If you have seen some of my other posts then you may know that as part of our two-person household we are outnumbered 3 to 1 with furry four-legged creatures. This among other things has lead to the humans not making terribly extravagant purchases when it comes to home furnishings. For example, expensive leather couches and malicious clawing cats do not go well together.

In addition to our relatively inexpensive and excessively abused furniture, there is my penchant for fixing mending and salvaging the unsavable, coupled with a powerful reluctance to throw things away.


Which brings us to this little jem.

And if you think it looks bad above. Then don't look below.

I have saved this thing from its rightful place in the landfill on multiple occasions. Some of my repairs, including the duct tape phase, are perhaps regrettable but the glued-on patches, the shabby recovering job, and the duct tape all did allow for the survival of this well used and well-loved piece of furniture. And thanks to my questionable behavior mentioned above it has finally received a proper repair. This restoration was also made possible by the hubby's constant need for new and unblemished jeans and the fact that one of the many things that I have not been able to part with is our old foam mattress.


If you have ever priced pieces of foam then you can guess that buying replacement foam for this particular item would have cost more than the thing was worth when it was brand spanking new.


But due to the afore mentioned availability of foam and denim I finally came up with a proper fix for this footstool.

The general plan was to tear the footstool down to the frame. There were a lot of staples holding on the cover so the two main tools that I used to remove the staples were a 5 in 1 putty tool and a pair of end cutting pliers.


This footstool was assembled in two pieces, one frame piece with the legs and another frame piece with the cushion. Once the two pieces were taken apart it was fairly easy to disassemble the top.

The picture above is one quarter of our old queen size mattress. You can see the mattress has three layers. The top layer is memory foam then there is a thin layer of foam and a thick layer of foam. The layers of foam are glued together but are fairly easy to separate.


I used the thick layer of foam for padding and then used several pairs of Jean's to make the patchwork cover and an old sheet to replace the lining pieces.

All the fabric was reattached with a staple gun and many many staples. Popeye arms or lots of breaks required.

The final step was to screw the two frame pieces back together.

The dogs seem to approve.

You can find more details for this project in the attached video.


Thanks for taking a look at my project. If you would like more upcycling project DIY's or Green Product Reviews please visit my blog or Youtube channel to subscribe.


Happy Upcycling,

Cindy

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Cindy @ Upcycle Design Lab
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