The Hip Single Mama's DIY Couch

I love simple and modern furniture. Unfortunately, simple and modern furniture is always the most expensive kind of furniture there is. The less complicated it is, the more you pay. Ikea has some great stuff that's fairly moderately priced, but spending $300-$400 on a couch isn't an option for me right now. I decided when I was moving out of my old apartment and into a new one last week, that I wanted to get rid of my couch (I mostly didn't want to move it because it was super heavy and not that aesthetically appealing) and build one for myself.

The first thing I did, before I moved out of my old apartment, was recover the seat cushions and throw pillows from my old couch. When I moved I brought the cushions and pillows with me, and ditched the rest of the couch. I sat on the cushions on the floor for about a week (it was actually pretty comfy!) until it was couch building day this past weekend. I based this DIY couch project on this Apartment Therapy Desire To Inspire article.

Now, I did have a little help. A friend of mine made a 3D model with the dimensions, but this project is totally doable without a 3D model. On Friday night we went to home depot and picked up all the supplies needed. I decided to get cheaper wood for the support beams, legs, and the plywood inside, and I got a nicer looking light wood for the visible frame around the whole couch. Total amount spent was $59 (and I had a lot of wood left over).

Miter saws are fun!

Onto building! First step was to cut all the wood with the miter saw. This was super fun (and I totally want a miter saw now, but I have nowhere to put it).  If you're going to attempt this project, make sure you have all your measurements written out first to make it easy! Once all the wood was cut we pieced it together to make sure everything fit like it should, and then we took the pieces out, flipped the plywood over and screwed in the legs. The next steps after screwing the legs in is screwing the outer support beams in, then the V shaped support beams, and finally the 4 support beams in the middle.

All the support beams in place to make sure they fit

Screwing in support beams

Those steps were the most time consuming, and they didn't even take that long to complete! Once you have all of the support beams in place, the only thing left to do is screw in the front, back, and two side pieces that are visible. I also put a strip of wood inside to keep the seat cushions in place, since I left several inches behind the cushions so I could tons of throw pillows.

Finished! Now I just need to bring it home and put pillows in the back.

And I present to you: my finished couch! I'm always making or scouring thrift stores and vintage shops for fun throw pillows, so I think this couch will change it's look in the next few weeks since I can play with it now. In front of the couch you can see come oversized wooden blocks that I made for Eli out of the wood left over from the couch legs. He loves them! There are 12 in all, some not pictured, but he constantly stacks them all up and knocks them all over. Aside from the extra wood that I made blocks out of, I have 3 pieces left over from the visible front and side panels. I might turn those into shelves, all I have to do is get some L brackets for them.