Thanks to the advent of Pinterest, sprucing up your house has become simple, inexpensive and rewarding! The other day I was perusing Pinterest and came across this little beauty!
I loved the idea and thought it would be easy enough to do myself! I decided to make a sudo armrest by stacking the cinderblocks differently than what was shown in the original image above. This minor change also saves money because you need less supplies.
Supplies:
8 - cinder blocks 16x8x8 (there are different sizes, I learned the hard way)
3 - 4x4's
Wood Stain
The natural look of the wood is nice, but I wanted a darker stain and I happened to have a walnut wood stain on hand! I stained only one side of each of the 4x4's for a couple reasons. One, so to not use up so much of the stain, and two because I didn't want to need to use a sealer to protect the cushions that I would be placing on top.
To make sure it looked cohesive, I stained the ends of each of the 4x4's. It looks sloppy now, but I promise, it will be feel complete once it is all put together!
Because I did not want to purchase paint, I used the wood stain to stain the cinder block as well. Wood stain is much cheaper than cement stain and works just as well for our purposes!
I gave the stain a couple days to completely dry before adding the cushions and pillows.
The cushions I found on sale at Target for $20 ea.
To save money, I ordered these $5 pillow inserts (free shipping) and found inexpensive pillow-covers (also on Amazon). Or if you are crafty, you can sew them yourself. Most of the pillow-covers shown here were $2-5 ea.
For a little of $100 you can build yourself a large outdoor couch, with very little effort!
