Reupholstering a vintage ottoman

Our second project over the Bank Holiday weekend was reupholstering and restoring a vintage ottoman. The ottoman was given to us by my mum and has been in my family for at least 60 years, so approximately the 1940s.

We learnt from the reupholstery we’d done on the two dining room chairs and I think we’ve gotten better at it. 🙂

To begin we removed one of the trims that was attached to the upholstery and removed the lid so we could clean inside the ottoman. While I cleaned, Artur went ahead and removed the old tatty material as well as the old foam.

Once this was complete we begun painting the ottoman. We painted the trims, the wicker, the wood and the feet in white, it took about 3 coats to cover up the gold and beige used before.

In between coats we popped to our local D.I.Y store and picked up some varnish for the wooden storage box and to look at fabric for the ottoman. Our bedroom has a lot of purple, so we chose a purple fabric with a simple design, which just so happened to be on offer for £1 per metre! Of course we bought extra and Artur’s mum offered to make us some cushions from it.

Back from the D.I.Y store we proceeded to cut and fit the foam and fabric to the lid of the ottoman and stapled it in place – we actually ran out of staples near completion lol, so needed to go back to town the following day for more (the shops close early on Sundays).

Once we’d finished the reupholstery, we fitted the lid back on the box and it now has a new lease of live and looks great at the end of our bed – we did also toy with the idea of putting it in the living room, but decided against it even though it looked pretty in there.

The finished ottoman in our bedroom. 🙂 – The room was dark when I took the photo, the colouring looks more like the photo above.

Total: £0.85p