Kara Paslay Guest Post: Upgrading Your Furniture

Hello there!  My name is Kara and my husband and I write the blog Kara Paslay Designs!   Tim and I work together doing all sorts of interior design projects.  I am the big picture girl and Tim is the detail guy and furniture builder.  Our favorite projects include doing custom installations or building custom pieces, but unfortunately that’s not always in the budget.  When we are working with a smaller budget, there are a few tricks we like to use in order to make pieces feel a little more expensive or to make existing pieces work for us.  One of those tricks is changing out furniture legs.

You can see how we created a more modern look for this couch by simply switching out the legs for a more sleek and slender style.  Restuffing the cushions with a higher density foam (another great tip) also helped the piece feel more clean and modern!

Now, the process of switching out furniture legs is actually super simple and relatively inexpensive.  Let me demonstrate the process with this ottoman I bought for a client’s living room.

I saw this piece on Amazon.com.  At $190 it was a good price.  I went ahead and purchased the piece knowing I could enhance the look by adding some elegant turned legs.

Amazon is also a great source to point you toward a number of furniture leg options from different vendors.

The idea is that by simply changing out the stock legs with more substantial turned wood legs that the piece would feel more expensive and similar to this Restoration Hardware look below.

I ended up choosing these turned legs which I stained with Minwax’s Jacobean color.

So here’s the 3 step process of switching out the legs.

First, remove the stock legs by simply loosening a few screws with a drill or screw driver.

Next, you attach these furniture leg brackets to the bottom of the piece with screws.  You can find these at any hardware store (Lowes, Home Depot, Ace, True Value, ect.)  Make sure you measure and are attaching each bracket in the same location at each corner.  I measured mine about an inch in from each side.

Lastly, you simply screw the new legs into the brackets.  Here’s what the final product looked like!

I was very pleased with the final look.  It definitely fits my client’s expensive taste much more than the original piece.  And the best part is we saved $200 compared to the Restoration Hardware option. . . and my Amazon piece boasts hidden storage to boot!!

We hope you enjoyed our post and gathered a couple of tips to help you make standard furniture look more expensive and stylish!  We hope you’ll stop by our blog and check our other DIY archives!  It’s an exciting time for us right now because in addition to having a bunch of client projects going, we just moved into a brand new space!  Tons of projects are on the books!  Stop by if you have some time!