DIY Interesting And Useful Ideas For Your Home: A First Attempt at Upholstering

This was a fun and I was glad I participated. The theme for November was Take a Seat and it had to incorporate upholstery.
I usually sign up for this each month because it pushes me to try new things and this was definitely a first!

The sponsor was Minted and they were kind enough to supply us with some awesome fabrics. I chose two coordinating fabrics for my bench. Here is the before pic. It was a nice bench. It had some scratches but the cushion and the arms were in great shape. But it did not match anywhere in my house and I purchased it at the Truckload store just for this project. It was $47.

a first attempt at upholstering, painted furniture, reupholster

I was scared to death but jumped right in with removing the seat cushion and the arms completely so that they would be easier to work with. I set out removing all of the old fabric trying to keep it in most of it's original shape. It seemed like it took forever to get the fabric off.
I used the old pieces of fabric to cut out the new pieces.

I painted the wooden parts white. I started with chalk paint but could tell right away that the stain was going to bleed through. So I ended up using a spray paint/primer combo in white. It worked nicely!
I also created some piping from the bench cushion fabric to give the arms a little detail . It did have piping before but all of the same fabric. I like the way this stands out.
The front part of the arms were done in the smaller pattern with the white background but I made the back side of the arms the green fabric like the bench and the piping.