storage solution

Ever since we moved into our townhouse, there has been an issue of "where in the world can we cram this?" We cut our square footage in half, so needless to say, lack of space is a major problem.  That problem got even bigger when we got a Kinect for Christmas, but have no space to move around to play it! Now, talk about sadness. To help with the situation, I decided we needed to get rid of our coffee table.  It's nothing special and it takes up a lot of space with minimal storage.  But that leaves us with another issue - no place to put drinks, plates when we want to eat in the living room (which happens quite often), etc. And we still have the issue of no storage. In comes the ottoman:

 

This thing has been stuffed in the corner for when we need it, which has been never since we moved in, simply because there was no space for it. Well, I decided to make it useful. It started out in one piece, so first thing was to separate the top from the bottom and strip it, which meant taking out no less than 200 staples..not kidding..whoever made it got way staple-happy. It literally took us three hours just to take them all out. 

And let me clarify that my husband helped me tremendously with this remodel. I could not have done it without his muscle power =) After stripping all the cloth and padding away, Tanner made a bottom to hold things in. 

Next step, re-cover:

 

Final step, make somewhere to set stuff like drink, plates, etc.:

And the thing I love the most, is it gives me a place to put blankets and pillows since we don't have a linen closet!