Banquette Seating And Dumb Mistakes

I'm waiting on my wiring supplies to arrive so I can start actually building the structure of my reader's retreat/tiny home. In the meantime, I've been busy making a blueprint and measuring everything out perfectly since it's a tiny, "tiny home," and I have very little room to play around with extra furniture.

I didn't think there was room for a full couch so I decided on making banquette seating. (Side note, my phone keeps autocorrecting "banquette" to 'baguette," and it cracks me up to think of seating made out of a giant loaf of bread).

This was a basic idea of what I wanted. Something simple and off-white although I wanted to have slats in the base.

I decided to make the seating out of foam core to give it some weight. Since I already had the measurements, it was easy to cut out the pieces.

I added some architectural details using popsicle sticks and an Easy Cutter. Seriously, get an Easy Cutter. It has saved me so much time and sore hands. Also, the bottom piece in the picture above is super crooked, but I caught that after taking the photo.

Ugh, upholstery. I haven't upholstered anything in years, and my first attempt was terrible. This was my second attempt, where I used a strip of fabric glued around cardstock for the edge. I was SO excited about how good it looked. And then I got back to my work table, and this was my face when I sat down:

I had upholstered on the wrong side of the L-shaped cushion, which meant that my cushion wouldn't fit on my seat. I could have re-upholstered, but that would have been my 3rd attempt, and I was so happy with the last result. So I decided to turn the seat upside down, and rebuild a top. 

I'll have to make some readjusting to the tiny home layout, but it was a good test of patience. Here's the finished project along with some magazines I made including a tiny Benedict Cumberbatch cameo: