Looking for a cheap and easy way to cover sharp edges of furniture? Maybe you need to protect a sharp furniture edge situated too close to a swinging door. Or perhaps you are looking to babyproof your home and protect your little ones. Today I’m going to share our easy DIY furniture bumper to cover sharp furniture edges using pool noodles.
Backstory
For our home, it is easiest to enter and leave our house through the back patio doors. It’s closer to our driveway and cars. But unfortunately we do not have a mudroom or formal foyer at the back of our house.
And it’s a tight squeeze. These patio doors lead directly right into the diningroom. As you can see in this picture below, there is less than six feet between the door and our diningroom table. So minimal space. (you can see the bench in the left-hand corner of the photo)
That’s not a lot of room to work with to remove and store coats, hats boots, especially with 3 young kids in the winter…
So we strategically created a “mudroom area” using as much space as possible.
How did we do that? We bought a few key pieces – bench with basket storage, key rack with shelving combo for mail, coat rack, and boot tray.
Surprisingly it works extremely well for us. But there was one issue with the bench and patio door. As you can see from the picture above, when the patio door is opened too far it bangs against the sharp corner of the bench.
And I envisioned one of my little ones entering the house one day, swinging the glass patio door open with all their might, slamming the door into the bench. And cracking the tempered glass. Or chipping the bench. Or both.
And that won’t make mommy happy…..
So we needed a cheap and easy way to cover sharp edge of furniture. Enter the easy DIY furniture bumper…
Cheap and Easy DIY Furniture Bumper Using Pool Noodles
Sure we could buy furniture bumpers. And when our kids were little we tried various safety bumpers. But honestly, I never found one I truly liked. They never stayed put! And they definitely weren’t worth the money.
Enter this simple pool noodle hack that solved our problem. I picked up a pool noodle at the Dollar Store (can’t beat a $1!). I was lucky enough to find a blue color noodle that matched the diningroom paint color exactly.
If you do this easy DIY furniture bumper, make sure the pool noodle has a hole in the middle, and not solid all the way through.
(Note that if you don’t find a color you like, it is possible to paint a pool noodle, but you have to use specific paint).
Using a knife, I cut the pool noodle widthwise to cover a portion of the bench corner. Then I split the noodle lengthwise.
I worked the pool noodle over the bench corner. (ok, maybe my daughter got in on the DIY action)
While the pool noodle did fit over the corner of the bench, but it didn’t stay on very long. Every time someone opened the door wide enough that it bumped the pool noodle, the noodle fell off. Which was obviously annoying.
So I just secured it with packing tape.
And wa-la! No broken glass patio door. No dinged patio bench.
Is our easy DIY furniture bumper pretty? Obviously, it’s not magazine-beautiful. But its simplicity and easy (and cost – $1!!!!) is beautiful (Did I mention that it was only $1!! AND I have more pool noodles to cover more furniture corners if needed).
And with all the things that we store in this mudroom area you don’t even really notice the blue color on bench. In fact, I don’t even notice the pool noodle at all anymore!
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