Raising a sofa with furniture casters to turn it into a dining settee bench

First of all Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful break and holiday season! I’m ready to blog again!

… and wow isn’t that an exciting title to start with? Uhmmmm nope … but let me tell you it’s a project that I should have tackled much much sooner because the outcome is literally life changing for us. I had bought the antique silk velvet sofa in our dining room years ago, yup years ago at a local auction but the seating height was not meant for a dining table. It was just too low and I had put solving this issue on the back burner. I just always apologized to people who sat at our table by saying that I didn’t get to fixing the issue yet and that they should just focus on how comfy the settee actually is and not the fact that they are sitting at the table like children who just aren’t as tall yet as everyone else. Yeah I’m rolling my eyes at myself as I’m typing.

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Part of this project paralysis was due to the fact that I didn’t know exactly what I could use to raise the seating. I mean I knew that I could use furniture casters but there are so many options out there and the legs of our settee are slightly curved. Drilling holes into the slight bend scared me a little.

So since I’m giving our dining room a mini makeover, I finally decided to reach out to D. Lawless Hardware to see if they could help me. It was definitely the right decision because they are awesome and super responsive. We narrowed it down to two types of casters I could use for my dining settee. Let me show you:

The 1 inch brushed petite stem caster and the 1 1/4″ solid wood caster w/ sleeve.

You see most dining room tables are around 30 inches high and a standard chair height is around 18 inches from the floor to the seat. Our settee seat is almost 17 inches high so the 1 1/4 caster took it to the desired 18″ height since there should be 12 inches between the seat of your chair and your tabletop.

Plus the wood caster’s weight rating was higher than the brass caster and the chance that the wood caster would scratch my floors would be much lower than the brass casters as well.

So wood casters was the choice for us.

How I turned a standard antique sofa into a dining settee bench

Tools needed:

• casters
• hammer
• chisel or flat head screwdriver
• drill and 3/8″ drill bit

Let me show you what I did:

I removed the old metal pins from all 5 feet with a chisel.

I use the 3/8″ drill bit to drill holes into all 5 legs.

I had to make sure that I didn’t drill too far into the curved legs.

Then I placed the sleeve pin on to the holes and hammered them into place.

And all that was left to do was push the wheels/casters into place until I heard a locking sound.

And voila…DONE!

And now we finally have dining room seating that is appropriate for a standard table.

Maya agrees that it is awesome.

The rest of the dining room makeover will include a new table and chairs, artwork change, new counter stools and some wall molding.

Here are some old photos where the settee didn’t have wheels yet. You can’t tell that it is too low though:

So next time when you are looking at a small scaled sofa or antique settee at a yard sale or auction, then picture it in your dining room or eat-in kitchen.
Everyone loves sitting on our piece because it’s so comfortable and I also think it’s super stylish and unconventional. I love it and I’m glad that it is finally raised to standard dining chair height.

I can’t wait to show you what the wall molding looks like and if you are following me on Instagram then you have already seen it in my stories (HERE).

I’ve also been so upset about how things ended up with Anthony. I wrote an email to my subscribers about him right before Christmas but I’m heartbroken to report that he passed away a day after Christmas. It is just so sad. I updated an old post about him, so if you feel like reading up about it then you can do so by clicking HERE and scrolling to the bottom.

Tschüß,