We built a couch!

When we found out we were moving to Nebraska we decided to sell everything. We came out with a mattress and a 4x8 trailer towed behind our Chevy Cruz. 

Now we have the fun job of slowly replenishing our belongings on a student budget. One thing that was a big deal to us was our couch. We are kinda couch snobs. We had a long list of what we wanted in a couch: black or grey, seats 5, no pleather or suede. And it had to be small enough to fit in our tiny family room. Oh and it had to be a sectional.  We first went to check out the Nebraska furniture mart that everyone raves about and found a few couches we loved for anywhere between $700-$2500. A little steep for our budget. For 2 weeks we watched craigslist like a hawk. But everything was just old or smokey or overpriced. So after not having a couch for a month we decided to build one. After doing some research we discovered how hard that can actually be and how expensive the foam could get so we decided to rig it together a bit. We started with these two couches bought second hand for $30.

After ripping off the fabric we tore off the arms, built it a new back, and recovered it! (An overly simplified summary ha ha).

Starting to build the new L frame

Ready for foam!

We used every scrap we could of the previous foam. We got pretty desperate with the scraps towards the end ha ha.

Covered with batting to smooth everything out. It's finally looking like a couch!

Fabric going on. Thank goodness for a staple gun!

Things got kinda sketchy...

I am going to give Bradyn credit for 95% of this couch. He tore the thing apart and assembled and back with me pretty much as moral support ha ha We covered it together and I did sew the cushions so I deserve a little credit too. 

Final product! Our budget for a couch was $200 because that's what we sold our old one for. We spent $30 for the two couches, $5 for the quilt batting, and about $160 on the fabric coming out to just under $200!

As a side note...We also threw up some shelves with some of the free wood we got from somebody's deck. Woot woot we love free.

Our First Build

As Bradyn and I were getting ready to head off to dental school we talked about what hobbies we wanted to do together. I suggested picking up tennis. Bradyn suggested woodworking. Bradyn is really talented with his hands and building things has been sort of an outlet for him. And he is a perfectionist. Me on the other hand... I start off strong but by the end of the project I'm cutting corners and doing sloppy work trying to speed up the process. Together we make a great team. Everything starts off exciting as we begin our projects. But about 2 hours in I'm grouchy and trying to convince Bradyn that the "little details don't matter", "I like it like that", or "its rustic". For our first project we made a bed! It was actually pretty easy. We had to buy some power tools (which I think was Bradyn's secret plan all along). And by "some" I mean a miter saw, nail gun, air compressor, palm sander, and a skill saw. We are grad students now so some of these things were inherited (thanks dadio) and others were Ksl finds. We bought these tools slowly one by one as Bradyn convinced me we HAD to have them for the bed. Honestly it made things so much easier but for anyone wanting to attempt this... You probably could get away with less power tools. 

I found this plan on Ana-white.com. I only discovered her website recently but she is AMAZING and her website is so cool. Pretty much any wood project you can imagine and some you would never think of!

Here is a link to the bed. 

http://ana-white.com/2009/10/farmhouse-bed-save-158100_7467.html

These plans are so detailed with a shopping list and cut list and everything!

For just the supplies (not including power tools) we spent $150 like the plans suggest. Here is our pile of wood.

Assembling it went a lot faster than I thought! And the nail gun was pretty fun. 

Here is the finished product...

Pretty cool, right? I still can't believe we made this!! The bed is almost perfect but I did convince Bradyn we didn't need to paint the backside of the headboard... No one sees that anyway.