Benched

“A throne is only a bench covered with velvet.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, we have a spare room that we are trying to decorate as a guest room knowing that it will eventually be a nursery.  I have been trying to pick sea foam and coral shades with bright white furniture to create a fun and sort of beachy feel.  We always need more storage space (I could probably stop buying stuff and then we wouldn’t need to store as many things and be in constant need to storage, but that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon!).  So I started looking on Pinterest for interesting storage ideas that could work in a kid’s room. Here is the final product.

I came across this post on Mommy Vignettes and loved the idea. This side has very detailed instructions with lots of photos. I would recommend reviewing it if you would like to build something similar.  I’m adding a few notes about my experience…

• The Expedit 5 shelf case was discontinued, but I was able to find one on Craigslist for $40. Ikea does carry a new, similar bookcase that would probably work as well.
• The white baskets are also from Ikea and were a bit of a splurge at $15 each. It blew my budget for this project but nothing else looked as good as they did and it really had the feel I was going for.
• MDF board is very heavy! And it also only came in really big sheets at Lowe’s – I think 5 ft. x 6 ft. I had them cut it for me in the store but I ended up leaving most of it with the lumber guy in store because I didn’t want to store a massive piece of really heavy wood (back to the storage issue with row homes). It was $35 for the board and the cutting was free.
• I should have put another few layers of batting around everything before stapling the fabric on but I somehow missed that step and when I realized it, I didn’t have the energy to pull out all the staples and re-staple.  It was a week before my wrist surgery and my arm had all it could take with the first round of staples. Someday I will go back and add more batting.
• Fabric came from JoAnne.  I can’t remember how much fabric I got but I know I got twice as much as I should have, which worked out well in this case because I had enough leftover to make curtains.  I also couldn’t decide between Aqua and Blossom, so I got both and my husband’s aunt was able to help me make pillows with the Blossom.
• I was not able to find cheap foam anywhere.  I did a lot of research for this part since it sounded so inexpensive in the original post but I couldn’t find anything online or in local stores that was anywhere near the pricing that blogger found.  I ended up getting a custom piece cut at a local fabric shop for about $80. Ouch.
• I did not add the legs, it just seemed like an added expense and It wasn’t really something I needed.
• Total cost $250 (about $100 more than I thought it would be but $75 for the baskets was a splurge)

The print hanging between the windows came from Homegoods.