DIY Woven Leather Bench Tutorial

Leather adds warmth and style to any room, so why not add a nice woven leather bench to your entryway to spruce up your space? It’s easy to make, comfortable, and (I might be biased) looks great! Who wouldn’t want that??

Let’s start DIYing!

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Tools

• Drill
• Staple Gun
• Screws for the Legs

How to Make a DIY Woven Leather Bench

New to DIY? Download our free 5 Steps to Getting Start with DIY guide!

Step 1: Cut your wood

Cut your wood to size (ours is 34″ long and 14.5″ deep)

Note: we used scrap wood and combined two boards to make one piece that’s why you might see holes in our wood. You can either buy a board that’s already the right width or combine multiple boards.

Step 2: Cut your polyfoam

Place your wood on top of your foam and trace the outline of the wood with a Sharpie. Cut two layers of foam for extra cushion (it’s actually really comfy when you use two layers). We cut our foam with normal scissors.

STEP 3: attach your foam

Use spray adhesive to attach the foam to the wood and again to attach the foam to the second layer of foam. Spray both the foam and your wood before placing and applying pressure.

Step 4: wrap in a base fabric

Wrap your base fabric around the foam and wood and secure with staples. Be sure to pull it tightly. Note: if you pull the fabric too tight in a certain area and not in another, there will be indentations in the foam and your sides will not be even.

To wrap a corner, fold the fabric along the wood of the long side and then pull the fabric up. Remember, these shouldn’t be seen in the end, so don’t stress too much about the corners!

step 5: cut your leather

Cut your leather into strips. Your strips will be woven and will need to go from the bottom of the bench then around the foam to the other side. Add an additional 2-4″ to what you think you need to avoid cutting them too short to weave and staple.

You can use a long ruler to draw straight lines, a laser level, or a spare 1×2. We made our leather strips 1.5″ wide. Make some longer spare strips that will be able to go halfway around your bench on the sides.

Step 6: add leather to the sides

Use spray adhesive to attach a strip or two of spare leather around the sides of your bench. We added the extra leather strips so that none of the black fabric would show through on the sides or corners. To ensure the corners were leather, we started the strip in the middle of a short side and looped it all the way around.

step 7: staple your leather

Before stapling all of your leather strips to the bottom of your bench, you want to staple a piece on each side of your bench. These two strips will be used the weave the edges of the bench. When stapling, staple the leather to the wood, not the foam.

You will be able to position your leather strip to appear in the middle of your edges. I know this sounds confusing and of course, I forgot to take a picture, so here’s a quick drawing for reference. The strip should be long enough to cover one long and one short side.

Staple your leather strips to the bottom of your bench. The long strips should be stapled to the short side and the short strips should be stapled to the long side. Staple them right next to one another so that there are no gaps.

Step 8: weave your leather

Flip your bench over and lay out the long leather strips side by side. Weave the edge strip through the long leather strips on the short side.

Weave the short strips of leather through the long strips, going over and under every other strip. Since you have the piece for the edge of your bench stapled and ready, be sure to weave this strip as you go along.

It likely won’t be the perfect size, so you can cut it to end halfway through the first strip after the corner. You might need to remove the staple on this strip temporarily so that you can staple your edge strip to the wood underneath this leather strip. The goal is to hide the start and end of the two edge strips.

Once you finish weaving, carefully flip your bench over and staple the strips to the backside. Weave in the other edge strip for the other side as you are stapling these. Before stapling, make sure to pull the leather tight, but don’t pull too tight or you will compress the foam.

Step 9: Cut excess fabric

Step 10: Add extra leather to bottom

Measure the bottom of your bench and cut your extra leather to cover most of the bottom of the bench for a cleaner look. Glue or staple the excess fabric to the bottom of the bench.

Step 11: Attach your legs

Since you might hide some staples and have to go through the fabric, I would recommend pre-drilling before trying to attach with screws.

You did it! You made an awesome leather bench that is stylish and comfy! Be sure to tag us on Instagram(@craftedbythehunts) when you share a photo!