Build your own living room furniture for the fun of it.
You can build your own living room furniture that is functional, playful and hip, using the method that's best for your skill level and the time and money you want to invest. Choose an upholstery-heavy project like a footstool to show off your fine embroidery skills, a happening side table made of repurposed orange crates if you like the idea of free materials, or modernist chairs made by tweaking free woodworking patterns you can find online if you are a woodworker -- or want to learn be one. Consider DIY ideas for building your own living room furniture, pick one to cut your teeth on and get cracking to create a room of handcrafted seats and tables your guests may never want to leave. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Make living room furniture from cardboard boxes. Artist collectives like the Paris-based Cartonnistes offer classes and videos with instructions for crafting dressers, chairs, tables and shelving from old boxes. It is a step above using your moving box as a coffee table -- these pieces require the use of a utility knife, craft glue and paint -- but the results can be as playful as you imagine. And experimenting with cardboard is much less time-consuming, expensive and forgiving than designing with wood.
2. Find free living room furniture woodworking patterns online. Peruse options ranging from modernist chairs to open shelving, and select one that appeals to you. Choose a project that is just beyond your existing skill level if you want to learn something new, or something you can knock out in a few hours if you want to focus on finishing touches, like a detailed paint job and hand-carved drawer pulls. Free patterns for footstools and foam cube chairs are also floating around out there; seamstresses can create a whole living room filled with cushy furniture without lifting a hammer.
3. If you see a piece of furniture you like, but you can't afford it or it isn't for sale, keep an eye out for pieces with similar bones -- that is, furniture of a similar shape and style -- that you can modify to make your own. For instance, that wooden side table heavily embellished with mosaic and gold claw feet you glimpsed in the Barcelona youth hostel might not be in every furniture store, but you can probably find a table of the right size at a thrift shop near you. Take it home, artfully paint its feet with cartoon-y claws, and cover it in a stained glass mosaic worthy of Gaudi. This might not be building your design from the ground up, but after all, it's the personal details that make your living room furniture your own.
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