Crib to Bench Project

When Pinterest first came out, I happened upon a picture of a crib turned into a bench.  I thought it was a great idea, but the link that it went to was just a picture, no tutorial or anything.  My son's crib had been taking up space in our basement for six years or so and for whatever reason, I had never gotten rid of it.  We didn't use it for our daughter when she was born, and it had since been added to the list of drop side cribs that were recalled a few years ago.  I have no idea why it was still around, and I decided to do something with it.

In looking at the picture I found on Pinterest, I realized that the crib we had wasn't going to work the way they had transformed theirs.  The headboard and footboard on our crib were different (one had rails and one was a flat panel), and the side rails were thin and lightweight.  With the crib in the picture, they had been able to just cut one side in half and attach it to the back, and that wasn't an option with our crib.  I've learned that with most things I plan, they are never as easy as I think they'll be, and this was not an exception to that rule.

I needed a back for the bench, and the only thing I could come up with, was to flip the two side rails on their sides and attach them together.  We (by we, I mean my husband operated the saw while I watched) then cut the head board in half to create the arm rests and attached them to the back piece we had made.  Then we cut the footboard in half, removed the flat panel, and the decorative top piece was turned upside down and made into what would hold the boards for the seat of the bench.  I used two 8" wide boards and a 4" wide board to make the seat.  Here is what I had at that point...

I filled the screw holes with wood putty and sanded the whole bench before using a spray primer and then spray painting the bench.  This summer I power washed and repainted it (using chalk paint... see Sierra's tutorial here Sew Much More Than Rubies) because the paint hadn't held up the way I wanted it to.  I wish I had known about chalk paint when I made the bench, because I like it so much more.  The paint color I chose was Valspar "Aqua Ocean".

Outdoor fabric isn't cheap, so I waited till it was half off at JoAnn's and used a 20% off coupon on top of that.  I had a piece of 2" high density foam cut for the cushion, as well as a piece of clear vinyl cut in the same size as the fabric.  I made my bench seat using this tutorial from Honey We're Home, but added the layer of vinyl before the fabric since I am using the bench on my front porch.

I sewed some quick matching pillow covers and that was that.  I love this bench so much and had so much fun making it!  The crib originally belonged to my sister in law, who told me she didn't need it back and that I could do whatever I wanted with it.  After my project was done she said she'd like the crib back because she likes it a lot more now.  I think I'll go ahead and keep it.