The Great Reupholstering, part 2

All right. Yesterday we had gotten to the point where we'd taken all of the fabric off of the couch, and I'd undone any sewing on said pieces so I could use them as patterns. Let's go on, shall we?

When all the pieces were removed, labeled, and unpicked, I rolled my new fabric out on the great room floor, and then used the old pieces as patterns.

Bruce told me I should measure the seat cushions and make new patterns, but I said, "Bah! I don't need to do that!" He was right; the seat-cushion covers don't fit tight enough, and when you sit down you leave wrinkly bum-prints. :-/ If I have enough fabric left after we do the other couch I will redo the seat cushions.

I am using a sliver of soap to trace around the old upholstery pieces; I left just a little extra space around each one. There's the famous deck piece, all cut out. And the piece labeled "arm" is a mistake. I blame Bruce. (It is actually a shoulder piece.) I was only labeling the pieces from one side of the couch, but Bruce had tossed these pieces that he removed onto my pile. So I labeled my pieces "shoulder" and his pieces "arm". It wasn't until after I'd cut them out that I realized this made no sense at all. But I can use those pieces for the next couch, so no harm done.

It took me about five or six hours to lay out the "pattern pieces" and cut them all out—labeling the new pieces as I went so I'd know what went where. I also pinned the deck pieces together, the pellon-type stuff to the appropriate pieces, and the shoulder pieces together at this time. Maybe a six-hour day, all told.

Here is the state of my great room after the cutting project. And, in fact, until I was completely finished with the couch a week later.
For shame!

(By the way I was not going to buy any more new stuff than the fabric I'd already gotten. Fortunately, even though these couches are pretty old, the foam was in decent shape—needed a little hot-gluing in a few places, but still decent. The deck and pellon fabrics were in very good condition too, so I was able to set them aside to reuse.)

While I cut and labeled the pieces, Bruce worked on the frame—specifically the springs and the arms.

The springs are attached to the couch with some little brackets that are, basically, a piece of metal that curves around the spring. This bracket has little (little) prongs that hammer into the frame of the couch. The brackets had broken—not where they bend (as you'd expect) but behind the bent part. So the springs would still fit into the brackets and stay in place, but the brackets themselves would not stay in place. However, we noticed that these brackets also had holes in them that looked just right for wood screws...
Easy fix, and no extra purchases necessary. Hooray! (Bruce also reinforced all of the non-broken brackets with wood screws.)

When we inherited these couches they had this golden-oak-and-brass-looking trim that went down the shoulders and arms, and across the bottom front. Very 80s—or maybe 90s-looking. And the very first thing I did was remove all of that and get rid of it. Then, within weeks, someone sat on the arms (or maybe stood on them, or punched them, or something) and they got dented. Bruce has said, and I agree, that the arms of a couch should be sturdy enough for people to sit on them (and, in fact, I am as likely to stand on them as anyone, if I need to reach something...).

I don't know if you can actually read the lettering that's on the picture. But it says that the hot pink line there follows the curve where the fabric sunk into the broken arm of the couch.

When we got down to the frame, we saw that the arms were built like this:

Actually the arm of the couch also had two small blocks running across the empty space, so it was built just like the shoulder. Both the shoulder and the arm were covered over with some chip board—about double the thickness of poster board—and it had holes punched through it in many places. (You can also see here that Bruce stretched a piece of denim over the bottom springs to—hopefully—protect the foam that will sit back on top of them.)

Bruce cut out some pieces of wood and screwed them in, and then tested the arm by putting as much weight on it as he could (although he is too tall to stand on the arms of the couch). It was much, much better.

Here's the board that Bruce put into the arm which makes it sturdy enough to sit—and maybe even to stand—on. He also put a couple more blocks into the top of the shoulder piece where, if you were standing next to the couch, you might lean on it. Yay!

Then Bruce suddenly had a lot of work (paying work) to do, and I went out of town with the girls. So a week passed before I got back to the couch.

First I had to sew all the fabric pieces together. (With a heavy needle, some upholstery thread, and a walking-foot my little home machine had no trouble with this.) I spent two days on the sewing—six or seven hours? At this point Bruce was still really busy with work, so I just decided to tackle the reupholstering myself.

But, alas! It's getting later and later (10:00!), and I haven't even had breakfast yet. And I have real work to do around here. So I will finish this story tomorrow.