Burlap & Denim

Last weekend was spring break for our kids.  We dropped them off at their grandparents home for a few days of fun for them, and relaxation and shopping for my husband and I.  It started with some antiquing and then a trip to a beautiful new shopping center in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City.  City Creek has been under construction for quite some time and I couldn’t wait to see it.  They had a beautiful new Restoration Hardware store that I couldn’t wait to check out.  It was amazing, a huge store with several rooms, each presenting a different line of furniture.  I had recently received my HUGE catalog and enjoyed looking through it, but the deconstructed furniture line looked even more impressive in person.  It is made to look like each piece is in the middle of construction.

 Unfortunately the price tags are way to high for my budget, but I thought I’d see if I could use it as some inspiration for a piece I had at home.  The sofa below has a long history.  My mom purchased it as a denim slip covered sofa years back.  After a lot of use and sagging cushions, she donated two of them to me..Yay!  You may have most recently seen it in my front red room without the slip cover as shown here.  It was kind of a blank slate so I figured this would be a great start to my inspired design.

I gathered the necessary tools:

Scissors

Screwdriver

Ruler

Hammer

Thumb Tacks from the Dollar Store ($1)

Burlap (I needed 2 1/2 yards, $7.50)

I started on the back, tacking the fabric in place.  Then I spaced the thumb tacks every 2 inches and tried to make them as straight as possible using the “finished” edge from the fabric along the top.

I didn’t do any complicated measuring before hand, I just started and 2 inches worked out pretty well all over the piece.

Once the back is secure, tip the sofa forward and tack the sides and bottom in place.  I didn’t measure the bottom, just put the pins in every so often.  I did measure the sides, only to undo them below.

Trim off the excess fabric.  I should have unscrewed the feet and tucked the extra fabric underneath, but I didn’t think of it at the time, it worked out OK though, none of the flaws show.

As noted above, I initially just planned on burlaping the back, but then I realized I had enough extra fabric (from cutting off the excess) to do the sides as well.  I unpinned the sides below the arm, tucked the side fabric underneath the back and repinned the back.  I also added pins to the side, although unnecessary, every 2 inches opposite of the back tacks.  Trim off the excess frays.

You might be worried, what if I don’t like it when it is finished?  Or what if next year this style looks ridiculous?  I always like to keep my options open too.  When I removed the pins off the back to add the side fabric the fabric almost “self healed” itself.  There is a slight indentation, but the pin was only out for a few minutes, so if I really scratched and ironed it, I’m confident it would look like nothing ever happened.

So, do Dollar Store thumb tacks really work as nail heads?  Do they stick into the sofa and stay?  You betcha!  I’ve been wanting to embellish with nail heads, but they are so darn expensive, and then the special hammer, nail head spacer etc.  Our Dollar Store has gold and silver and it is the best deal around, I’ve looked, $1 for 300 pins.  Because this sofa is “deconstructed” I did’nt care too much if the “nail heads” didn’t line up perfectly, so it was great practice, and the ruler worked great as a guide.  A small hammer we had worked great, it didn’t scratch up the tacks  but it did help force the pins into the wood frame of the couch.  I have to be honest here though, many of the pins did not go easily into the wood frame (Thumb Tack Fail), many bent slightly or folded in half completely (as you can see in the Thumb Tack Graveyard).  But I just threw those in a pile and grabbed a new one.  Just make sure that where you are inserting the pins is not backed by metal, but directly into the wood.

So here is my finished sofa.

I’m glad I added the extra burlap on the side for other views.

The back looks amazing when you walk into the house, unfortunately these pictures don’t do it justice.

For the front of the sofa, I took off the unshapely back pillows and replaced them with a few large ones I made a few years ago.  I think it has a beachy, Pottery Barn, Ralph Lauren look, at least that’s what I keep telling my self!

Hope you like it!  And if you don’t, I’ll be changing things up next year anyway.  That’s what’s great about an $8.50 makeover!

Linked Up: Home Stories A2Z, Funky Junk Interiors, Tatertots & Jello

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