Our Nursery Window Seat/Toy Box!

After browsing Pinterest for hours days, I had mentioned to Justin how great it would be to have a window seat bench in our nursery, seeing as the wall randomly juts out next to one of the windows, and it would be nice to have some extra seating in the room. A couple of days later, I came home from work to a pile of lumber and Justin's drawn-out plan for the bench!  (What a guy :) 

It took us a weekend to construct it (When I say 'us', I was really only the board holder/nail handler/sidekick) and then another week to paint, order/receive the foam and choose fabric. (it took me numerous trips to the fabric store to decide on a fabric... I'm THAT girl that stands in front of a wall of fabric bolts for an hour and then leaves the store with nothing. It's torture)

We chose to not actually 'install' it in the room so that we had the freedom to move it around in the future and we didn't have to destroy the walls around it. At first we weren't going to put walls on the inside, just put some fabric baskets in there to hold toys, etc., but then decided that it would look much more finished with the interior walls so it made a trip back down to the garage for the finishing touches.

After painting the outside white I had the wild idea to paint the inside a bright, contrasting color for a little 'surprise' when you open it up, so on a recent trip to Lowes, we browsed the reject mis-mixed paints and found a gallon of a bold orange color for $5. How can you beat $5 for a whole gallon of paint?! So orange it was!! (by the way, if anyone is looking to paint something bright orange, let me know... I have about 3/4 of a gallon just sitting around :)

I am by no means upholstery-savvy, but for my first project, this one was easy and turned out pretty well - the fabric seems really secure to the board and doesn't have much give, probably because it's attached underneath with no less than 1,000 heavy-duty staples.

Overall, this project ended up costing us about $150 which, to me, seems like quite a bit but things add up! (lumber, foam pad, fabric, hardware, paint) But after thinking about it, we couldn't have gotten one like this that fit perfectly into our space and is so STURDY (Seriously, I invite you and your two largest friends to take a seat... this thing won't BUDGE!) for less than what we paid for materials. The final dimensions are about 3.75 ft x 2.5 ft on top and 2 feet tall. It will be perfect for hanging out with baby catching some afternoon sun :) (Plus it has SO MUCH room inside to store toys and 'stuff' - what kid doesn't love a toy box?!

The front of the box will eventually be home to some wooden letters spelling out baby boy's name... but we're keeping that one a secret until June. Sorry! Check back for an updated window seat post around then! :)

... And for those of you wondering, the bench has already become a favorite hang out for our furry friend, Jasper. He pretty much thinks he owns the place and we built the bench for him to get a better angle at the afternoon sun/view of the neighborhood. (we don't have the heart to tell him differently... he's in for a big enough shock-to-the-environment come June, we don't see the need to take away the last few months of peace and quiet that he'll enjoy in this room. We're such suckers for that furry face :)