A Re-Purposed Antique Bed

We had another first at Martineau Furniture!  We usually repair and re-finish our bigger furniture, but with the antique bed we had to totally re-purpose.  We were trying to decide what to do with this bed because the headboard was warped and the wood had some glue mishaps, and my wonderfully talented, sweet daughter walked in and said" We should make it into a bench".  She must have fabulous genes because I thought this was a great idea.  So my husband came up with the plan and I worked on the style.  This is a before picture (very fuzzy, because although a furniture genius, my husband is not a great picture taker).

I will skip the steps on how Dave made this into a bench, because this would be a very long post.  He cut, drilled, glued, clamped, and puttied. It turned out wonderfully. The slats are just for show, we put a solid wood base on later.

We sanded the whole bench.  I sanded with 80 grit sandpaper, just enough for the paint to stick.

We spray painted the whole bench black with our handy paint sprayer.  The picture is of just the black paint with out the poly on it.  I put the bench on it to see what it would look like.  I then upholstered the wooden seat by layering batting on top and staple gunning it in place.  I wrapped the fabric around the seat and staple gunned it to the underside of the wood.  I measured out and marked the place for the "tufts".  I hammered nail-heads into my marked spots.

We painted the bottom wood piece black to match the bench.  This was something we should have done before I upholstered, so now you can learn from my mistake.
We Polyurethaned the bench with a satin Poly.  We attached the upholstered seat to the bench with metal L brackets and it was done.

Please email davewhit4@gmail.com with any interest.