Knock It Off DIY: Upholstered Hairpin Bench

 

For this month’s “Knock If Off DIY” challenge, we are taking on World Market. (I totally spilled the beans on that yesterday with the free printable I shared!) We all love World Market and their pricing is definitely on point with my budget, but there are a few things that they have that you can get creative, have fun and make yourself (you know, to save money to shop more ;)). Since I’ve begun working on my dining room, I thought I’d focus on that space as the basis for what I wanted to knock off.

We don’t have a table yet because I haven’t found one I love, but the seating situation I’m dreaming up is an oval table, 2 captains chairs, 2 chairs down one side and a bench on the other side. The piece I’d love to have in the space (but don’t quite have the budget for) is the Calypso Upholstered Hairpin Bench.

Since I’m not much of a builder (and if I’m ever telling you complex building instructions, know I’ve gone missing) I took a look at Craigslist to see if there were any benches I could customize to look more like the bench I wanted from World Market. I kid you not, there was a listing for a World Market bench. The fabric is much different but still has fun color and pattern. I think it matches the tapestry I’ve hung much better than the fabric of the calypso bench, too.

If I were going to reupholster it though, I would probably choose to go with something like these:

So I don’t have an upholstery to share (winning!) but I have covered a bench seat before and you can watch the video here if you’d like an idea of what to try if a bench you find doesn’t work well.

The only other thing I needed to do was replace the legs. I found these hairpin legs on Amazon of all places and they ship prime so I had them in 2 days. Then it was just a very simple matter of unscrewing the existing legs and whipping out the power drill to install the new legs. I did have to get a tad creative getting the legs and screws to line up where they could actually be drilled in, but it didn’t take much effort.

I can’t wait to find the dining room I’m imagining! It’s really hard to see a vision without a major piece like that, but you’ll have to stay tuned!

And now the most exciting part: There’s more! Yes, there’s a whole group of us working our way through the challenge every month. I am so heart eyes for these projects- I’m so impressed!