Upcycled furniture - Queen Anne Footstool!

Upcycled Queen Anne Footstool

When we moved into our house we were had nothing. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that a footstool is not a necessity, but it was something we wanted and so to get the things we needed and wanted within our budget we had to start bargain hunting.

I was sitting telling my gran how I'd been searching the charity shops, gumtree and ebay for a Queen Anne footstool to repair and reupholster and how I couldn't found one when, low and behold she had one in her garage! I instantly remembered it when she showed me it and was excited to start the task of covering it!

I had looked online for tutorials since I had never done this before and found this really useful..

http://www.instructables.com/id/Upholster-a-Queen-Anne-style-stool/

When I had stripped off the three layers of fabric on the old stool (my grandparents had been recovering it for a while, one time stapling on the fabric and another time using nails. F.Y.Y. don't use nails they're a nightmare to get out and look really untidy.) I discovered the inside of my stool was nothing like the one in the instructable, infact the cushion was pretty much crumbling away. 

 Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the stool at the start, but this shows it after I stripped it back.

So I set off creating the padding for the stool- I went to the Glasgow foam centre and got some foam for the project and my window seat, and got some wadding from mandors for extra padding. To cut the foam to the correct size for the stool I used a serrated bread knife. A tip I got from another blog which I can't remember - it gave a good straight finish. 

The legs of the stool had scratches, as you would expect from a used piece of furniture and so I sanded them down and varnished them to give them a new lease of life. This was not time consuming and really did brighten it up very quickly!

The foam for the top was very firm and so to give a softer cushion I added two layers of wadding. I also wrapped this round to the underside of the stool so that the wooden edges had some padding to them. I used a staple gun to hold the wadding in place and then came the fun part - covering it!

I placed a piece of fabric that was slightly bigger than necessary over the top of the stool. I am one for erring on the side of caution when it comes to doing something I haven't done before hence the oversized fabric. I could then cut away at it when necessary as I wrapped it round the legs and the underside. I wanted to have the corner folds as hidden as possible and so pulled tightly on the fabric to smooth the creases. A staple gun fixes the fabric to the underside of the stool neatly and you can then add the upholstery studs as a decoration as opposed to for actually holding the fabric in place. As luck would have it I had an upholstering hammer so that was handing for tacking the pins in. I think you could probably use a normal hammer but you may loose the smooth rounded finish of the pins with this.

So here is the final piece. I was really pleased with it for a first time job, but any tips for when I tire of this fabric please let me know. It didn't take very long to do, a day in all with letting the varnish dry properly before covering it and we now have a lovely "new" piece of furniture for our home!