Betty Ray Stewart is my alter ego, affectionately (and recently) assigned to me by a childhood friend I haven’t seen in….oh….30 years?  It’s a combination of the hottest Home-making names around….

Betty (Crocker) + (Rachel) Ray + (Martha) Stewart

I love it!  Sometimes I simplify it on Facebook by just saying “BRS”.

Anyway…..home improvement project ahead….

We purchased two matching storage ottomans from Target over a year ago, and recently they’ve both been looking quite sad.  There’s just no more “coosh” left in the cushion top.  They look saggy and worn and when you sit on them you can feel that there’s no foam left inside- and you can feel the (assumed) wood frame.  Not comfortable at all.

With Christmas coming, I wanted to freshen them up.  I figured they just needed new foam, and that’s easy to pick up at any craft supply store- or heck even Fred Meyer!  And it should be an easy fix – just peel off the cambric backing under the lid, pull out the staples that hold the leather wrap in place, pull out the bad foam and replace it with solid foam, put it all back together and voila!

Easy peasy, right?

Not so fast.

First off, removing the cambric finish piece was less than easy- I gave up pulling staples and ended up just ripping it off (yes, leaving tiny holes where each staple was).

And it got very messy- tiny pieces of foam were flying all over….

And this is what I saw once I had a large enough section removed:

Um, not quite what I was expecting.  But now I knew why the ‘coosh’ was all gone!  And how cheesy is this- lawn-chair webbing?

All the white ‘sparkles’ you see are actually tiny tiny foam particles.  And see how the foam is blocking through those openings?

Hmmmm.  This is not going to be fun.

At this point we decided to put down a large bedsheet to catch all the tiny particles.  You should have seen my pants when we were done- I was wearing fleece- um, not the brightest idea.

I finally got everything taken apart and tossed the large chunk of deteriorating foam into a trash bag.

Here’s the lid frame:

We definitely don’t want a repeat occurrence, so we decided some reinforcement would need to take place.

We had a bunch of ‘seatbelt’ straps left over from some infant seats that we recycled years ago….so I wove that across the mesh and stapled numerous times for extra security.

At least now I’ll feel like I’m sitting on a little more solid of a seat!

Next up I took a thick piece of batting and cut it to size so it would be a layer between the webbing and the new foam, hopefully preventing any break through should our new foam decide to break down after a year like the foam that came with it!

Then I cut a new piece of 2″ thick  foam to size (from Fred Meyer for $9.00)

I lay the leather piece face down, inserted the foam, made sure it was square and tight, then I put the batting down, then flipped the web-seat over and started wrapping the edges and stapling (no pics, sorry).

Here is the finished product!

And just for a refresher- here’s the before again:

The kids were in awe.  “Mom, that looks better than when we bought it!  You are like magic.”

(I know dear, I know)

Ha ha ha ha….

There you have it…. two beautiful plush ottomans again for a $20 investment plus about 2 hours of labor….

And with all the stapling I did- I do NOT want to have to do this again….I hope these hold up!