Ikea Beddinge Hack - Upcycled Floor Cushions

Recently, we got a pretty new sofa bed and had two solutions to come up with. The first was how to break down the old Ikea Beddinge futon bed which we were *finally* getting rid of, and the second was we now needed some type of footrests to have in front of the new sofa.

I love to upcycle and came up with a plan! I decided that the best option was instead of making or buying an Ottoman, I would use the foam from the Beddinge mattresses and create stackable floor cushions. This way, whomever was using them could decide on the staking height, and they could also be used as single cushions if we wanted to sit on the ground with them. The foam was still in very good condition and had enough firmness for this project.

I started with the inner structure of something like this:

I took the foam mattresses from inside the seat and back (2 separate pieces) and removed the covers. The two mattresses were actually different sizes so I decided to use the depth of the smaller one to determine my cushion sizes-> 23" x 23". The height of the mattresses I kept as was, 4.75" (it would be a nightmare reducing the height of the foam!). Using a t-bar and ruler, I marked the parameters of each cushion on the foam using a permanent marker (hey, it would be covered with fabric so it didn't matter how pretty the foam looked) and then cut it with an X-Acto. This was not very fun considering how thick the foam was but eventually I ended up with a stack of roughly equal sized foam cushions! 

I found some chenille upholstery fabric I liked and drafted a pattern to make removable covers for the cushions. I put in invisible zippers along the side which were 25", longer than the length or width of the cushion. 

I basically had to go with what I found in regards to the zippers but in hindsight I should have made it my mission to find matching zippers longer than this to make things much easier for myself. It is snug getting the covers over the cushions through the zippered opening! Overall, I am quite happy with how this project turned out and I was very glad to have been able to recycle such a large part of an old piece of furniture.

Photo Credits: SMASHWORKS 2013. All Rights Reserved.