Reupholstering A Vintage Piano Bench

Anyone who knows me knows my love of all things old. I love taking something that is forgotten or neglected and turning it into something beautiful again. My usual way of doing that involves paint. I’m always refinishing something. I love the power that paint has to transform old, timeworn pieces into stunning statement pieces of furniture. Paint isn’t the only way we can revitalize pieces though. Sometimes, paint is actually the last thing I want to use to transform a piece. It certainly wasn’t paint that made this old bench come back to life. This time, it was the upholstery.

This old bench was an estate sale find from two years ago. It came from a house that was just down the street and around the corner. Anytime there is an estate sale within walking distance of my house, you can be sure I’ll be there. Judging by the look of the interior of the house, it hadn’t been updated since the late 50s when it was built. The appliances were even still original. The owner who built the house had likely stayed all these years. As I was rummaging through all these treasures and memories of this neighbor, I came across this vintage piano bench. Looking at the state of it, I knew it would likely be something that no one else would want. The woodwork was stunning, but the old, odorous upholstery might push this piece to the curb. I couldn’t let that happen. I wanted this piece to still have a purpose. The bones were too beautiful to pass up, and if I have an opportunity to give something a second chance, I will do it. So I whipped out the $10 and walked home with it.

Now, I didn’t have a clue where to begin with this. I had only ever reupholstered a garbage picked chair before. Only the small seat cushion needed the update. It was simple enough, but something told me this one wouldn’t be so easy. I had gone and purchased a clearanced out blue floral fabric and then… let it sit for two years. I had never been brave enough to rip that fabric off and figure out what to do. I simply cleaned the old fabric up and placed two pillow cases on it as a way to stall the process of reupholstering it. I use it as a bench to sit on to get ready in the morning, and it’s perfect for that, but I finally realized that if I ever want to actually have something beautiful to sit on, I would have to bite the bullet and figure it out. Turns out, my intuition was correct. For an amateur who had no real experience with this, this project was a nightmare.

It took me hours to pull this thing apart. The padding inside had crusted and was deteriorating. I had to cut the fabric off with the shop vac running almost the whole time. The deteriorated padding poured out of the fabric like pollen. I questioned right away what I had gotten myself into. After I finally got all of that vacuumed up, the tough component arrived. The fabric and trim around the base was held together by at least a hundred incredibly tiny nails. I’m not even talking about the decorative nailheads around the exterior of the fabric. There was layer after layer of fabric held together by them. I had to take off all of the decorative nailheads and then take out all of those baby sized nails with a tiny flat-head screwdriver. It took hours… and numerous bruises, cuts, slivers, and scrapes all over my hands. And after almost 4 hours of removing it all, I came across another problem. I couldn’t simply tuck the fabric under the bench and staple it. The whole piece screwed in from the top, not the bottom like a lot of other pieces I’ve seen. I have never been so thankful to have a handy husband in my life.

After Ryan changed the construction of the bench, I was able to put on the new padding and simply tuck the new fabric under the the bottom of the base for the bench, staple it in, and screw the base in from the bottom. That left me with my next dilemma: the trim piece. Because I didn’t put it back together the way it was originally constructed, the thin wooden strip where all those nails went was now exposed, and it looked terrible. I had to make a trim piece, but how? I had no clue. I have no sewing machine and no other tools I would need to make it. That’s when I had an idea. I decided to take fabric tape from a small dress emergency kit I had picked up for my sister’s wedding day and use it for my trim outline. It’s probably not the correct way to do this, and some of you may be laughing at my ignorance of it all, but I had no other real options haha! Necessity can be the key to creativity.

I cut the fabric into strips and folded the edges over the fabric tape. I ran the iron over it to make the “seam” more streamlined. Then I took those nailheads and hammered them into the trim piece one by one. This was extremely time consuming and resulted in more frustration and beat up hands haha! When I finally nailed in that last decorative nailhead and saw the finished result, I couldn’t believe it. All these hours of frustration and hard work actually paid off. I made so many mistakes during this project, and it is absolutely nowhere near perfect. But, I actually did it. I saved that old bench and somehow made it beautiful again (I should say the fabric did, I mean… look how gorgeous it is!). I hope that it’s original owner would be proud.

Sometimes life works like that. Actually, life looks like that a lot. Many times, the best things in life are the things you have to fight for. Nothing in life worth having is easy. I had to fight hard for this piece. I had to be willing to face a lot of failure, but the truth is, failure is the best teacher in the world. I was tempted so many times in the process to just throw it all away. I felt incompetent, incapable, and unqualified. I truly had no concept of what I was doing. But when I thought back to the idea that I want to give someone else’s piece a new chance again, I was able to push forward. I am so glad that I stuck with it and did it, no matter how clueless I felt and how frustrated I became.

Maybe you feel that way right now, like nothing you do is getting you to where you want to be. Keep going, keep fighting, keep pursuing. In the end, you’ll be amazed what some persistence and blood, sweat, and tears can actually achieve. Don’t you love the lessons that you can learn through restoring furniture? I sure do. And I hope this little lesson from a simple bench can bring you some encouragement today as well.

Thank you for stopping by today and checking out my latest project. I hope you feel encouraged to maybe step out of your comfort zone and try something new. You never know how much you can learn and achieve when you take that risk. It just might result in something beautiful. Thanks again for being here!