Furniture in my house has been a sore point of conversation for awhile. I had a very upsetting, contentious interaction with a former roommate that resulted in much of my furniture no longer belonging to me and some furniture waiting to be taken to the dump offered to me instead. Needless to say, everytime I glanced in the livingroom and saw our ugly, smelly, out of place couch it made me want to scream. Not to mention that it did not fit the space at ALL and forced us to have a pretty awkward, uncomfortable livingroom layout.
This couch has been a long process, and come together in many stages. The first thing that needed to get done was to trash the old bulky frame and come up with a new frame design that actually worked for the space.
I was able to entirely construct this frame from scrap wood from previous projects (mostly leftovers from my storage bed). It's a very simple design. I based the size of the frame off the one nice cushion I had saved from salvaging good parts of a small second hand couch. I decided to add some extra leg stretching room, and added storage, by making an ottoman cube that also allows for different layouts of the couch. The top of the ottoman lifts off to reveal a large empty area for storage, and there is just enough space under the main seating section to fit 4 crates (yay crates!).
At this point, the couch was functional and we were in desperate need of seating, so it lived for many months awkwardly unfinished with mis-matched blankets and pillows.
I finally got some time to finish up the couch (really I just wanted to make it cuter). I painted all of the trim a nice blue/gray color, I think it's called "denim blue". I decided to use one of my favorite craft materials: contact paper. I used an adhesive cork, but I decided it was too difficult to peel it smoothly off the backing, so instead of using the adhesiveness I used my own spray adhesive to attach the cork (with the backing still on) directly to the wood. I covered the back piece and head board and the bottom section of the ottoman. As an update: all the cork will soon be stripped down and the surfaces instead spray painted with a faux stone textured paint, since my bunny has decided that anything cork must be chewed to bits.
For the cushions, I decided to use a painters drop cloth as fabric. This is a great option for cheap upholstery fabric. I wanted something sturdier than a cotton fabric because we have pets that can be a bit rough with furniture, but upholstery fabric can get pretty expensive. I made simple pillow cases for all of the cushions. My favorite technique for pillow cases is to simply have the case overlap in the back, leaving a large split across the back to fit the pillow in. It does make the case one-sided, but it's so simple and easy to fit cushions in.
I added an adorable girl on a bike fabric that I've been saving for the perfect project to the back pillows. It matches the colors better than I could have hoped for. I am thinking that in the future if I need to cover up any stains on the bottom cushions I can stencil on some gears or bike wheels. I may also stain or paint the crates in the future, and I've been thinking about adding small hooks to the back for keys, etc. But for now, this couch continues to do a great job at helping make this space feel cozy.