Adventures in Reupholstering (or how I learned to stop worrying & just cover the crap up)

If you are following this blog and you're wondering how the diet is going, I weighed in this morning at 208.0, so I'm 15 lbs down in 30 days. Not too shabby.

Managed to accomplish some of my other goals this week too. I started the Herculean task of reupholstering my couches - but before you look at the pictures, let me give you some background on this particular subject. We have the house up for sale and, although it lacks a lot in terms of square footage and location, the house itself is adorable - and almost entirely due to the home owners who came before us. The couple we bought the place from took it from a shell to an adorable cape cod with all of these cute little touches - crown molding, wall treatments, Romanesque pillars, homemade window valences - gorgeous stuff, and none of it our doing. Here are some pictures:

 

They put in the hardwood floors, those pillars, the wife sewed those window treatments. See the crown molding that they put on the walls - isn't that a nice touch? And the shutters they put on the bottom of those windows, oh and the door with the curtained glass that leads to the front room was a "found" item that the husband refurbished and installed himself.

 

 

 

They did all of these built-in cabinets, the sun lights, light fixtures, really - all we did was put some Persian rugs on the floor and move in our furniture.

 

And the couch & love seat are naturally the most used pieces of furniture in the house - not counting the beds I guess. But I am the titled "bad mom" and so I did not make nor enforce strict rules about living room vs. dining room behavior. Hence, many a drink or food item got spilled onto the couch over the years. We also have gone through different animals in the past - fostering and so forth - so there are rips, tears, stains from a variety of dogs and cats. And upon putting our house up for sale, besides a little touch-up paint and some minor repairs, the only thing that was not show-ready were these tremendous eye-sores in our living room.

 

 

 

There's no point in buying new couches just to struggle to move them when we sell the place, so I got some cheap fabric - ridiculously cheap, there's a fabric store that just "LOST OUR LEASE!" down the street from me so I spent $27 for 18 yards - ridiculous. Now, before I show you what I did, let me remind you, the purpose of this whole venture was to make the couches less distracting to a potential homebuyer - not to refurbish the couches to keep them when we move. I do not sew. I hot glue. And - don't laugh - that is what I did to reupholster the couches - hot glued and stapled fabric to the thing.  Before you express your horror and disgust, let me show you the result of the love seat next to the still-to-be-done couch:

ADVENTURES IN REUPHOLSTERING

(or how I learned to stop worrying & just cover the crap up)

 

 

What do you got to say now, haters? Amazing what a little hot glue gun will do.

 

 

Here are a couple of pics of my handiwork during the faux-upholstering process:

 Yes, Kyle helped me. I didn't let him handle the staple gun....much.....

 

Again, remember the purpose - it's a short term fix - and remember how it turned out in the end before you scream bloody murder about my upholstering techniques.

 

For those of you who actually want to know how to reupholster furniture the right way, I did find a fantastic tutorial from allthingsthrifty - great blog BTW - that you can access

http://www.allthingsthrifty.com/2009/11/reupholstering-101-how-to-reupholster.html

 

Okay, today I attempt the couch which will be MUCH more difficult as it does not have removable cushions and the ends recline - this is gonna be a sh!t show, I'm sure.....