Let Go of Perfect

For our bedroom project, I bought a chair.  It’s a beautiful chair but I was really looking for something with some pattern or color. And I’m not a fan of the light wood legs.  I really liked the texture of the button tufting though and when I saw the price, $190 there was really no way I couldn’t buy it considering I had a mittful of giftcards for that particular store.  I ended up paying $26 out of pocket for it.  For a whole chair!  I was pretty excited about that.  Here’s a photo of it in store.

Then I was on a mission to find an ottoman to go with it.  An impossible task!  I wanted something with that color and pattern the chair was missing.  And I also wanted a matching pillow for the chair.  I’d never find a pair out shopping and custom ordering an ottoman and pillow was WAY out of the budget.  Every ottoman I saw in my travels was at least $200.  Crazy.

I decided then that I would find a used one and recover it. After all, recovering an ottoman is one of the easiest DIY projects out there.  They’re small and easy to handle and don’t take a lot of materials to finish.  I went fabric shopping first and found this lovely coral pattern in orange.  PERFECT!

Well, do you think I could find a suitable used ottoman?  I wasn’t picky about shape or fabric, but I was picky on price.  AND I didn’t want a leather one because putting fabric over leather is icky and I also didn’t want the work of removing the leather first. I couldn’t find anything!

Then I thought I’d make one.  Some plywood, some foam, some little legs…wouldn’t be too hard right?  And then, in the same store I bought my chair from, I came upon this:

It was on clearance for $94.  It had really cute dark wood legs and was just the perfect size. It was purple sateen….ew. It’s not often I buy something new with the intention of altering it, but it seemed that I’d shopped and shopped and shopped for something perfect and wasn’t finding it.  I quickly thought about price…I could likely save some money if I went ahead and made one like I had intended.   But how much?  $30?  I was willing to spend that in order to save the time in driving all over town and buying all the supplies and building the thing.  I bought it and got to work recovering it.

It took a few staples and about 20 minutes of my time.  That’s it!  I did lose the button tufting detail, which I could have saved if I’d wanted to…but the chair really does have enough button tufting for one room.  I wanted a nice clean shape for the ottoman. I think it turned out really well!  Now all I need to do is refinish the legs on the chair to match the darker wood finish and make that pillow to match.  Total spent on chair, ottoman, pillow and fabric = $175!  Total WIN!