Ottoman How-To

Remember this from Friday?

You guessed it. It was the height testing session for a foot rest/ottoman. Martins been wanting one ever since Wille grew tall and left no room for him on the sofa.

We love using up scraps of material when we build stuff.  This time Martin dug out an nasty old chip board which was actually packing material from when we ordered other stuff from the lumber yard. The chip board and some small bits of wood for reinforcement equals the base of the ottoman.

Because the chip board is quite thin and is kind of flimsy to drill into Martin glued some wood braces to the board. The little end bit that he's holding is a template to make sure the wood ends up the correct distance from the edge, all around. He then drew around the wood to mark where to glue. Clamps hold the pieces in place while the wood glue dries.

Again because this is thin chipboard Martin added some reinforcement inside so one can sit on the ottoman without fear of it collapsing. This was also glued and nailed in place. After this was done a second square piece was added making it a closed box

Small industrial wheels were added at the bottom, these were screwn into the chipboard, through the wood braces and into the corner bits, stabilizing the whole thing at the same time as making it mobile.

Here you can see the sandwhich that makes an ottoman. We again used a bit of old mattress as the cushion and added some batting on top to soften the corners.

The batting was stapled onto the bottom edge of the chip board frame. One layer going over from left to right and one from front to back making it double at the top.

 

I didn't have big enough pieces of batting so we ended up stitching them together, but this won't be visible so it doesn't really matter.

The removable cover for the ottoman is really simple. I cut a piece for the top and four pieces for the sides. Sewed them together like a cross and then sewed the sides together. Then I tried it on and pinned the hem and hemmed the hole thing. I was a bit too generous while cutting the pieces for the sides so I ended up cutting 4 inches (10 cm) off before hemming...

Here it is. Very comfy.I may want one for myself actually...

 

Ps. It's SNOWING!!!