Bench Press

Time for another project on this lovely Monday morning!  My baby, aka our little mudroom, has gone through several mini updates lately that give it just a little face lift!  I love making small changes that help make a room your own.  The main project was to make a padded cover for the little shoe holder bench we have.  I love this little bench because it was the perfect fit and is very functional!  See all of the shoes in there?  Imagine where those would be without the bench!  I bought it right after we moved in on Amazon and it has had no cushion on it for a year!

This project had many hurdles to overcome, which is why it took a while to complete.  First off, finding reasonably priced foam.  Who knew that foam was so expensive?  After searching for a long time at Michael's, JoAnn's and Hancock Fabrics (yes, even my coupons didn't make a big enough dent in the price), I finally found some at Hobby Lobby in Fargo (happiest place on earth!)  PS-So sorry to my mother in law and sister in law for making them wait while I frantically ran through the entire store since I never get to go there! 

 Instead of getting one big piece like I had been looking for, I found 3 separate squares that would fit together.

The base of the cushion is a piece of MDF board I had cut at Home Depot.  This was very inexpensive and easy!

What's this?  Dan helping?  Poor thing always gets roped into these projects.  But it involved a staple gun so he was my necessary assistant! (please ignore the messy craft room-aah!)

Surprisingly, this did not take us more than 20 minutes!  We laid everything out and wrapped the cushions to the board with batting material and stapled it in place.  The batting helped to hold the squares together and make the cushion softer.

I bought specific staples the same depth as the MDF board.  You can buy MDF board in various thicknesses (is that a word?) and I just chose the one right in the middle - not too thin and not too thick.

After the batting was secure, we wrapped the pretty fabric around the cushion.  I bought the fabric from Fabric.com and had to wait a few weeks for it to come off back order.  It's a popular print in about 3 different colors (green, navy and red I think) because it is a replica of the expensive designer fabric called "Imperial Trellis".  Hey!  I'm all for a knock off!

Ta da!  Just beautiful!  I'm talking about my pajamas you know....just gorgeous!! :)

Perfect!  

The pillows were the next piece of the puzzle.  Since we have the tealish blue accent wall in this room, I wanted to incorporate both colors (blue and green) and have the mudroom flow right into the living room with the same color scheme.

  I found the pillow on the right for $7 at JCPenny and the blue dotted one at Target on an end cap!  

Continuing on with the face lifts...when we moved in to the house, the mudroom had a few scuffs and marks on the wall.  When I tried to clean them off with the Magic Eraser, it made it even worse!  Take this as a tip: only use Magic Eraser on white walls!  It made streaks on the wall that looked like stains.  So, since this happened, I've been wanting to re-paint the walls and we just now got around to it!  One night when I wasn't home, Dan tackled the entire project!  I was so happy!  I tried to tackle it once by myself but one part of the wall that needed to be painted was right above the stairs and way too tall for me to reach even with a ladder!

This picture is with the walls before they were painted, it is a light tan.  

And here it is with the new paint that is a light gray called "Dolphin Fin" by Behr.  I love it even though I realize no one but us will ever notice it!

Another minor change is this new rug.  I'm sure many of you have seen it before, it is very popular due to the $25 price tag!  The gray went perfectly in the mudroom and with the new walls as well!  The rug that was in here before was the perfect green but much too small for the space and I was constantly on my hands and knees cleaning the floor!  Now I can just vacuum up the rug and done!

And yet another update that is long overdue!  The address picture is not new but has been relocated.  The mail holder is something I had been eyeing for a long time on Etsy and finally pulled the trigger!  It holds lots of mail, which is great, but the mason jar flower vase is what really sold me...what charm!  I had to put Irises in there of course for the Kappa visitors :)

So there you have it!  Lots of small changes that bring a smile to my face!  

Have a great Monday!