Mr. Bench.

I spotted this bench at Goodwill a few weeks back. It had a price tag of $20 and I immediately knew it had found its match. It was dingy and beaten up, but I had a feeling it had some potential.

Yep, I painted the last layer inside. It was freeeeeezing in our garage!

I'm kicking myself now that I didn't take a true "before" picture. Let me just assure you... it did not look like this in its original state. It was a beaten up piece of reddish colored wood with a stained and broken bench seat. I'm thinking the reason the owners probably got rid of it was because of the broken wood in the seat. It was unusable without some work.

So after sanding the bench down and painting it several coats of creamy white, it was time to work on the seat. I wanted to try my hand at tufting, and it ended up being so rewarding!

The only piece from the original seat we were able to save was the foam, thankfully. We had another piece of wood cut at Lowe's to replace the broken piece.

For the tufting, I had Shawn measure out six spots for buttons and drill through the board at those places. For the buttons themselves, I was determined to have matching burlap buttons, but I found out pretty quickly that those metal button kits are not made for thick fabric. Oops. With a little hot glue and some clamps, we made it work - but this little mistake set us back lots of time.

The basic idea of tufting is that once you recover your seat with fabric, you go through the holes in the wood with needle and embroidery thread, thread the button on the other side, pull it reeeaaaallly tight, then staple the thread to the wood to hold it in place.

You also want to try to pull the strings evenly so the buttons are at equal depths.

When put back together, I am so pleased about the new life this bench has been given! It's clean, current, has storage in the bottom, and now... it is the very best seat in the house.