Give An Outdated Bench A Diner-Style Booth Makeover With Pool Noodles

For those of us who spent plenty of time in diners during our youth, there's something nostalgic and comforting about sitting in an old vinyl restaurant booth. Aside from being cushy, restaurant booths just ooze diner cool and provide the perfect backdrop for eating mac and cheese, a burger and fries, chicken fried steak, or any other comfort food meals that strike your fancy. While it could be a challenge to take a restaurant booth home with you, it's possible to construct one from salvaged wood, some pool noodles, a ready-made bench, and little glue. And given that an actual restaurant booth may cost $700 or more, constructing your own booth makes good financial sense, potentially saving you hundreds of dollars.

To make your own personal restaurant booth, you'll need to combine your mad crafting skills and raw materials with some ready-made items. The easiest way to do this is to use some sort of store-bought kitchen bench that you'll add a back to. You'll build the seat back from the pool noodles and a board that's cut to fit the dimensions of the bench seat. You can secure a six pack of FixFind Pool Swim Noodles from Amazon for around $25. The number of packages you use for this pool noodle DIY will depend on how tall you'd like the back of your booth to be. You'll need some fabric to cover the booth back as well as some hot glue. A pair of scissors, a drill and some screws, a utility knife, and a staple gun are also necessary.

Standard heights for the backs of restaurant booths range from 36 inches to 48 inches from the floor to the top of the booth. If you'd like the back of the booth to start at the floor, then you'll need a piece of wood with a height consistent with the industry standard. If you're making a booth back to fit from just the seat of the bench on up, you'll want the board to be roughly half the size, or the height of the average person's back — about 24 inches to 30 inches. The length of the bench and the wood should be the same.

You'll glue pool noodles on the board. They should line up to the edge of the board and cover the whole length and height of it. The ends of the pool noodles may extend past the ends of the wood. If so, trim those with the utility knife. Once the glue dries, you'll staple the fabric to the back of the board and then pull the material over the over sides to cover the pool noodles. 

To make this look tailored, you'll line the spaces between each pool noodle with some hot glue and then tuck the fabric into each crevice. Then, you'll cover the sides of the booth by pulling the leftover fabric over the sides of the pool noodles and the wood and stapling it in place. Once the back is done, screw the seat back onto the wall with the drill and screws. The store-bought bench slides next to the wall underneath it to make it look like one piece.

One of the real appeals of the restaurant booth, aside from comfort and practicality, is how slick and stylish it looks. As such, you'll want to keep your kitchen's design and color schemes in mind as you select the bench seat and the fabric for the booth. Each of these elements can be tailored to fit the space to create a dream kitchen breakfast nook in the space of one or two afternoons.

Let's start with the color scheme. For example, if you'd gone with black and red in the kitchen, consider picking up a cushioned faux leather bench to use as your booth's seat. Cover the pool noodle seat back with some sparkly red vinyl to create a striking piece that complements the room's color elements. You don't have to go with a two-toned design, however — this example just highlights the decorative possibilities of your bench build.

It's also possible to add some decorative embellishments to the seat back. Push fancy fabric tacks into the booth back at regular intervals to give the seat a more polished look. The tacks will also reinforce the glue, keeping the fabric securely in place. It's for this reason that this addition might be useful, especially if you plan to use a heavy fabric like vinyl. Products like these Maozaa Decorative Upholstery Tacks can be found on Amazon. With all of these embellishments, your DIY built-in bench will not only be a place for you and yours to sit and eat, but to relax and read or do homework, too.