I have been thrifting and re-doing junky pieces of furniture for a long time, but recently I have tried re-upholstering. The thought of such a thing used to be scary and completely "out of my league" but when stumbling upon some recent "treasures" I thought, "why not try it"
Enter in trial #1
I know its hard to see, but this couch is amazing. The curvy lines, her french legs....oooh be still my beating heart. And as if she wasnt lovely enough, she was only $35 at the thrift store. This poor beauty sat neglected in my garage used as a storage heap for months and months and then....FINALLY it was her turn. It was time to tackle the BEAST. I pulled her out into the middle of the garage and started taking off all of the cushions. I immediately encounter problem #1. This thing smelles like smoke. Like 60+ years of Grandma and Grandpa sitting in their dark panelled living room watching Happy Days kinda of smoke! YUCK!!! "Ok" I think, I will just get new cushions.....I toss the old ones off to the side and began to pull out all of the millions of staples and tacks.
Enter in Problem #2
As the fabric started to come off the back of the couch, I quickly realized so was the entire back cushion of the couch. It was literally disintegrating as I went. "Oh no", now I was going to need an entire new back cushion for the couch. Uuugg! It filled my entire black trash can full of nasty old crusty pieces of foam cushion.
I left what I could salvage of the old batting and support fabric and painted the wood frame a robin's egg blue color. I distressed it in certain places and sealed it with a satin polyurtheane. Sorry I dont have pictures of that process. Now, it was time to get the cushions and start covering this bad girl.
Enter in problem #3
New foam cushion material is EXPENSIVE!!!! Who would have thought. I took the 3 old cushions into my local fabric wholesale store to see how much it would be to get new cushions for the bottom and 1 big cushion for the back. This seemed like a reasonable question to me, however their response hmmm, not so much. $160 for the cushions....WHAT??? "Just for some foam", I asked. "Yes" the lady behind the counter quickly answered "And that isnt even the real good foam" she said. Well, I wasnt about to pay that so, what I decided to do is re-use the 3 old cushions from the bottom and just get a new back piece. $64.00 later I had a new back cushion and 3 stinky, smokey used cushions for the bottom.
I've seen people using canvas drop clothes as furniture fabric and I just love that idea. I went to my local Home Depot and bought the biggest drop cloth I could find (make sure if you are going to try using this, you DONT get one that has plastic backing on it)I think it was about $36. I brought it home and washed and dried it. I then took the old fabric covers from the 3 stinky cushions and used them as patterns to cut new pieces. I even used the old zippers. The new covers fit like a glove. I love it when I sew something and it actually looks like what it is supposed to look like. I forgot to mention that the 3 stinky cushions had been temporarily living outside in the fresh air with about 1 bottle of febreeze on each of them. No more stinky, smoky smell!! Once the three cushions were recovered and done, it was time to tackle the back. This process was a little slower.
I had my love help me carry the couch into the family room so that I could be inside instead of in my dirty, hot, lonely garage while I worked on the back. Well, once I got all the kids into bed, I decided it was now or never and I started. I did the back first....cut to size, stretch, staple. Cut, stretch, staple.....over and over until the entire back was done. "Wow" I thought, this looks pretty good. I'll keep going. I moved onto one side and then another.
By this time, my love had gone to bed and the house was quiet....I always work better and faster alone! Well, alone with the TV on. I looked up at the clock and it was 2am, there sure isnt much on TV at 2am, but I did manage to find Dr Phil. Lucky me, I happen to catch a Dr. Phil marathon. As Phil solved the world's problems one "baby daddy" at a time, I continued to stretch and staple, stretch and staple and it wasnt until my love came around the corner with his morning coffee and said, "Wow, you finished it, it looks GREAT" that I realized it 6:30am and YES I had finshed it. Me and Dr. Phil finally finished my first "Real" upholstery job.
Here she is....
Isnt she lovely??
I have officially conquered my fear of reupholtery and have even managed to do a few other things. Her are a few pictures of some of the other pieces I've tackled. Oh and I ended up selling my "beauty" on Craig's List for a pretty little profit.
Good Luck with your projects and thanks for stopping by,
Kris
