When I met my now husband we each had our own home. My décor of choice was southwest. Don’t judge. I lived in the south at the time, so the in vogue home décor was either country or southwest. My future husband’s home was done in an Asian decor, and not just a hint of Asian influence, but over the top and in your face. Perhaps it was the size of his décor pieces in comparison with his tiny house, but trust me when I tell you it was really in your face. I suppose the same could be said for my home décor choices. A found cow skull decorated the rock garden in my front yard and deer antlers were used in more than one decorative item inside the house. Remember, please don't judge.
Suffice it to say we needed something new. The one décor style we both liked was Art Deco, but have you priced authentic period art deco pieces? So that wasn’t really an option. We began filling our house with things we both liked. As we started selecting decorative things for our new home we discovered that we like the 50’s retro look that has become so popular now. We were in on the craze early, so prices for pieces were still reasonable. Along the way we picked up this sad 1950’s day bed. We paid next to nothing for it. It had good bones, but would have to be reupholstered… something I thought we could tackle one day.
Well, that day came about six weeks ago. We’ve been accumulating retro pieces that we like and have been storing them in the garage. I had some time off work around the holidays so we decided to finally address the day bed.
We went to Hancock Fabrics to find new fabric for the day bed. I can’t recommend them enough if you’re in need of upholstery or drapery weight fabric. If you have a Hancock’s near you, you should check them out. Our store always has this huge area in the back with bolt after bolt for $3.50/yard. We found a print we liked that had that “retro vibe”, was the proper weight, and had colors that we could work with. We bought the entire piece of 4 yards.
The back of the day bed came off easily, so we just carefully cut the old covering away on both pieces. I used the upholstery fabric that we removed for my pattern pieces. We draped new batting over the existing batting and foam, applied the new fabric and stapled it to the wooden frame underneath.
I’m pleased with how it turned out. We have a slipper chair with wishbone legs that we’re going to recover in a coordinating fabric.
Then we just have the furniture placement and decorating to do. I’ll post pictures of the chair and the finish product of the room when we get there.
