Surprise Coffee Table

Last week I took a little detour to the local bargain barn on the way to....well, I'm not sure where I was going. Anyway, I picked up a short upholstered bench with teak legs. I love small upholstered things because of the redo potential, but immediately upon getting it home I realized it didn't fit in my living room, as seating anyway. I thought, however as the legs were easily removable, I could rip off the stinky upholstery and unscrew the legs to store for future use.


I expected to see plywood under the fabric, but was pleasantly surprised by the nice blond wood with a finish that had been well protected under the layers of batting.


The funny thing was that it didn't match the legs at all. It appeared that years ago someone had married two separate pieces of furniture. I tried it in place of my old coffee table, which I wasn't super in love with, but the height was all wrong. The different woods were really bugging me too. I must of dreamed about it over night, because very early the next morning it dawned on me that I had a small mid century stool with the same light wood legs as the bench and oddly they seemed too tall for footstool. I jumped out of bed and had to check.


Amazingly I found that the legs on both pieces were attached by the same hardware and could be instantly interchangeable so I swapped them. Now the bench/coffee table and footstool were at appropriate heights.


By about 8 a.m. I had a new and unexpected coffee table. For my next trick, I will attempt to upholster the footstool.
Bench $10
Footstool $7
Leg Swap $0