Tricky Bench Tutorial

A few months ago I whipped up a little something to help brighten up a corner of our dining room.

As you can clearly see our yard sale bench as seen better days. The upholstery weight remnant just didn't hold up to the chalk dust that our Chalkcloth (TM) board generates, so it was oilcloth to the rescue.

 I armed myself with a 1/2 yard of red apple oilcloth, a pair of scissors and a staple gun to quickly give the bench a facelift.

 As you can see my bench has a series of convex and concave curves so it was a little tricky getting oilcloth to behave.

 I needed to make slits at the concave curves so the oilcloth would give in and spread apart.

Then I created little pinch pleats on the convex curves.

 A series for pleats and folds keep the corners clean. Once you have one side of the corner fold it up and staple it into place.

 

Fold up the second half of the corner and keep it in place with a few more staples, I had to give them a whack with hammer to get them all the way in. 

 I was screwing the seat back onto the bench in less than 10 minutes! That's my kind of do-over, quick and easy!

Now when there's a ton of chalk dust on the bench after a long day of homeschooling, I just grab a wet dishcloth and whip it down and it's as good as new! Check out how to make a chalk cloth board out of a reclaimed piece of plywood we had laying around.

Happy Stapling,
Kelly!