Piano Seat Redo

Remember the piano seat well it's finally finished ..... ta-da! Yes, I am pleased with myself and as a result this post is a tad over photographed and slightly long winded!

The seat had 'fallen through' the inside and was the first thing to go. The braiding and the nail heads were old and disgusting!

I ended up getting almost all of the nails out but some of them were just too rusted so I nailed them back in and sanded over them, knowing they would be covered in the end.

When all the gross stuff was gone I sanded it a bit then cleaned it with baby wipes.

Then because it's treated wood I gave it two coats of spray primer in white, you only have to wait a couple of hours in-between coats. Then I used a flat white spray paint for the final coat and sanded it back on some of the corners and curves to give it that 'shabby' look. Then I had a baby {you might want to skip that step as it really drags out the process!} Finally I rubbed over some Poly to protect the paint and give it that satiny sheen. 

After the wood was complete I started on the seat, something I had put off since I didn't really know how I was going to make it work. There were lots of layers of grossness behind that faded fabric! In the end I decided to copy the old seat design exactly {it took me a while to come up with that genius plan} I pulled it apart and used it as a pattern.

I used an old T-shirt to cover some board and wadding then stapled it at the back. I already owned some cute fabric {from here} and used the old seat cover to determine size.

I was a bit skeptical about the strength of the old seat, after all it had fallen through but I stuck to the plan of copying what was originally there so I hot glued some pink fabric on the bottom then stapled for extra strength {the original green piece of fabric was just glued on.} Then I placed my newly recovered cushion on top with more hot glue. Then I placed my cute fabric over the top and glued the edges down so that it covered all the old nail holes.

To finish it off I skipped the circa sixties braiding and went straight to nail head trim. {Which I bought here} Mostly you buy nail heads individually which is expensive, time consuming and lets face it unless your a professional upholsterer your never going to get those nail heads to line up straight. If you buy them already joined up in a kit like this it's much easier {although a few nails still died at the hands of my hammer} which by the way you should cover so you don't scratch them all up. Baby sock does the perfect job! You can see the pink underneath when the seat is open.

Glad it's finished, now I can work on the little space were this is going.