Updated Bench (Stylish Spot for the Dogs!!)

Best Seat in the House: Bench Remodel

Submitted by Love and Renovations

Our dogs LOVE to look out the window. I’m assuming this is a normal dog behavior, but I swear that Ranger and Cullen take it to abnormal levels.

They did it in our old apartment…

Note: this photo was taken before we lived together, which would be why it’s so messy in that house.

And when we moved to our duplex, they continued to do it, only it was even worse because our duplex faces a street, and the apartment didn’t.

It’s annoying, to say the least, but there’s not much we can do about it.

On a seemingly unrelated note (I promise I’ll link it all back together), Cullen has suddenly decided that for some unknown reason he can’t jump up on our bed. Never mind the fact that he had zero problem with it for the first 6 months we lived here, and when we’re giving Ranger lots of love on the bed he doesn’t seem to struggle too much to get up there and get some love for himself.

But when it’s time for bed? He’ll spend hours (seriously, HOURS) jumping up and down next to the side of the bed, barking at us to help him up. I work with kids with behavior issues for a living, so it’s putting it mildly to say that I get a bit stubborn when it comes to these things. I absolutely refuse to let him learn that if he barks at us, we’ll let him up, so if we don’t catch him and toss him up on the bed before the barking starts, it’s unlikely we’ll get any sleep that night.

So, the other day when I was browsing Craigslist and I saw something that could be a solution to our problem, I knew I absolutely had to have it.

I’d been tossing around the idea to get a bench for the end of our bed in the new house (since our master bedroom is SO BIG), and this one fit what I wanted exactly.

And of course, in the meantime, it totally doesn’t hurt that we can put it next to our front window (since it doesn’t fit into our current tiny bedroom) and the dogs can hang out on it to look outside. See? I told you it would all make sense in a minute.

As soon as I got the bench back home, I had a vision in mind of exactly what I wanted for it. Glossy white paint and a modern, yellow fabric. I’m a big fan of mixing unexpected patterns and colors with more traditional pieces, and I was super excited to see how this one turned out.

I got it all painted within a few days of getting it, but then we had to wait for the fabric to arrive. So, for several days we had this sitting in our living room:

Lovely, right?

Well, the fabric finally came in a couple of days ago and I got the bench reupholstered and ready for our new master bedroom!

I tried to take photos of the finished product right after I was done, but there was a minor problem.

For the first few days, I literally could not get the dogs off of the bench long enough to take photos of it. They are in LOVE. One of them is almost constantly on it, and Cullen is very happy that he no longer has to stand on his hind legs to look out of the window.

Once the bench had been around for a few days, I finally caught a few minutes where neither of the dogs was one it (probably because they were outside or something) so I managed to snap a few photos of the bench by itself.

I’m absolutely in love with it, and I can’t wait to see how it looks in our room at the new house. And I can’t wait to know what it’s like to have a dog that can get up on the bed by himself again.

Oh, and don’t worry – the windows in the new house go almost down to the floor, so hopefully the dogs won’t be too upset when there isn’t a bench by the front window anymore.

Have you ever bought or modified anything in your house to make life easier for your dogs? Or am I the only crazy/pathetic one that does crap like this?

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