Ooh La La Home Staging: Stuff I've made for Staging- part 2.

.... and that I wish I could keep for myself.

My latest creation is a fun one.

As I was driving on a Tucker, GA street the other day, I spotted what others consider trash but I consider a treasure: a sweeeeeeet pallet!

If you too spend a lot of your free time perusing Pinterest, you will agree that pallets are where it's at. You can make practically anything out of a pallet- except kids ;)

So here is the beaut' in question.

First off, a pallet is VERY heavy. I knew I wanted to turn it into an upholstered ottoman and this pallet was too big. I checked into both sides and settled on a good place to shorten it. With my trusted circular saw. Yup. And then I finished up with my hand saw. It ended up measuring 27in x 32 in.

Now I had no idea where that pallet had been. I had to get all the potential gross stuff off of it. So I used a mixture of bleach and water to clean it and then I sanded it really well.

Here was my shopping list for the ottoman:

From Hobby Lobby:

foam: enough to cover the whole top of the pallet- I used leftover 2 inch thick foam.

batting: enough to cover the top, sides and to be tucked under

fabric: I could have had enough with 2 yards but I bought 3 so that I have leftover fabric to make matching pillows. I got my fabric at Hobby Lobby, using my 40% off coupon, of course.

1 long upholstery needle: to create the tufting on top

thick cord to attach the buttons

upholstery buttons

From Home Depot:

2 pieces of very thin plywood to cover the top and bottom of the pallet. In my case, both pieces were cut to 27 x 32 by a kind HD associate.

4- 9" legs and 4 brackets to attach them.

After I had cleaned and sanded the pallet, I attached one of my plywood pieces to the bottom of the pallet. I nailed them into the wood of the pallet, which was surprisingly really tough to get into. So I got all my frustration out and nailed them in!

I then took the other plywood piece and carefully measured where I would place my buttons. For my 27x32 pallet, I used 8 buttons. 3 in the top row, 2 in the middle row and 3 in the bottom row. I marked with a Sharpie where the buttons would go and drilled little holes for each mark.

After I had done that, I gathered my leftover pieces of foam and actually glued them together with adhesive spray. I made sure they covered the whole 2nd piece of plywood and I glued the foam to the plywood.

Then I covered my buttons with the fabric I would use for the ottoman. I used this kit from Hobby Lobby:

Then I took a break from all the upholstering and stained the 4 legs to be used on the ottoman (together with other legs I would need for other projects. And set them up to dry.

Now onto the tricky part. I placed the plywood/foam piece on a table, foam facing up. I added batting to cover it all and then I placed my fabric on top. I put strong cord on my large needle and led it through the first hole, across the foam, batting and fabric. Once I was on the other side, I passed the cord through one of the buttons. Then I had to go back down into the fabric, batting and foam and find the same hole again. That was tricky but with patience I got it done. Once on the other side, I tied a good tight knot. Try to tighten each button as much as the others for an even look. I used an electric stapler to tighten them all- I placed the fabric face down, pulled on each cord really hard from the back and stapled into place.

This is how it looked after all 8 buttons were in. Perfect.

Then I padded the sides of my pallet with more foam.

After that, I placed the whole plywood/foam/fabric/buttons contraption face down on the table and placed my pallet face down on top. I then pulled the batting all around and stapled it to the bottom of the pallet. I started in the middle of each side and moved to the corners. Then I cut the leftover batting to clean it all up.

I did the same thing with the fabric, making sure it is pulled tightly all over.

Now that the top of my ottoman was done, I needed to attach legs. I measured where each leg should be on the bottom, marked it and placed my leg brackets. Then I screwed on the 4 legs.