Upholstered Coffee Table Ottoman

The long-awaited, much-pondered, and hard-earned upholstered coffee table ottoman is here!

We’ll just call it the coftableman for short. ;)

Can you guess where our inspiration is from?  It’s Pottery Barn, of course.

My father built the solid maple wood frame to my specifications.  We made ours smaller than the PB version because we wanted it to fit in front of our loveseat.  The finished piece is 42” wide, 24” deep, and 17” high.

My mom stained the frame Bombay mahogany to match the TV cabinet in the living room.  A support rail was added with slats and a platform (much like a bed frame) to support the cushion top.  We topped ours with a 6” thick piece of high density foam and wrapped it in durable vinyl.

The fabric is faux leather in a fudge color.  I got it from Fabric.com.  Apparently, it’s supposed to look like bison leather?  We made a pieced pattern for the top like the PB version with the intention of adding tufted buttons where the seams meet.  After we sewed the top to the sides, and slipped it over the foam, we simply stapled it to the bottom of the plywood platform.

While I say “simply” it wasn’t all that simple.  After stapling it all on the first time, we laid it over the frame to have a look and realized that our support slats should have been offset to account for the thickness of the plywood platform.  There was a small gap between the legs and the foam!  Ick! 

So, instead of cutting out a space in the foam for the plywood or moving the slats down, we opted to fill in around the wood with some extra foam to make up the inch difference.  Voila! 

We sewed up the corners by hand to make it look pretty. :)

After pre-drilling the holes for our screws, we smushed the foam top on to the support slats, and while Mama stood on the frame, I fastened the platform to the slats with the drill!  Victory is ours!

For now, we have decided to forego the tufted buttons.  That’s just another place for crumbs to fall! :)  We like it flat on top for plates and drinks.  It’s so firm that we can even sit a glass on it with no fear.  And it’s still soft enough to rest your feet on.  Plus, the vinyl finish is so easy to clean!

Here’s what our old coffee table looked like:

Out with the old, in with the new and improved!

What do you think?  Like the new look?