Renovating for the Lazy

Before we bought Sarah, I was obsessed with home renovation shows. I pretty much watch them all. It probably started with Trading Spaces and evolved from there. I love pretty much everything on the DIY Network, HGTV, and even the classic This Old House which made Bob Vila a household name.

With the advancement of technology came websites to entertain me with renovation ideas: Pinterest, Etsy, Better Homes and Gardens, Houzz, and my new favorite Hometalk. If you've never visited Hometalk, it's similar to Pinterest and Houzz, where you can have idea boards with links to stuff you like. The difference is that it's almost all idea boards that include instructions on how to do things for home renovations. They link to blogs that show you what they do and explain how to achieve similar results.

I decided to tackle a project. I chose the window seat in our bedroom.

I did two things to our window seat area. My first project was to trim the curtains to the right height. I'm not a great seamstress but with help from my handy-dandy-sewing-machine I was able to bring the bottoms of the curtains up to the point where they just brushed the bottom of the bench.

 Here's a picture showing the great storage that the window seat has hidden under the trap door. We keep all of our bed linens and extra blankets there. The colors are all washed out because I'm shooting these in direct sunlight. Paint is actually white and the front of the bench is a very light grey.

The second part of my window seat renovation was to build a seat cushion to cover the trap door and the painted wood (which p.s. my kids had painted with permanent markers - the little sweeties). I found several tutorials online but I went with a no-sew bench cushion. Here is a tutorial if you want to know how I did my bench cushion.  

And if you're curious, here is what the bottom of the cushion looks like using the no-sew method. I really liked this method because the cushion fits perfectly into the space. It's a little snug so that my kids can't get under the bench and get out all of the blankets (and make a huge mess). And see - the wall in front of the bench is light grey, not black like the previous pictures looks like.

 Here is a view from the side, so you can hopefully see what it looks like in my room.

And finally, here's a close-up of the fabric and Kitty (yes, so original, we named our cat Kitty) I guess she wanted to get in on the action and hopped up on the bench while I was trying to take these pictures.