Yesterday, a very exciting thing happened: we finally got back our newly reupholstered couch. I won’t say it was cheap, but I will say it was worth the money, and in this post, I’m going to explain why we chose to reupholster an old piece instead of just buying a new couch.
We’ve had our big red couch for a few years now. It was a freebie we inherited when my best friend moved into an apartment and physically couldn’t get it inside. To be fair, we have to take our front door off the hinges and unscrew the base of the sofa to get it into our house (it is seriously huge), but it’s worth the effort. Anyway, when it arrived at our house, it looked like this:
It was a huge improvement over our previous sofa, and got a ton of use. The dogs especially loved to sit on one arm and stare out the front window. Unfortunately, with use comes wear and tear. The arm the dogs like to sit on started making alarming creaking sounds. The bottom cover tore loose on one side and Samara decided that the inside of the couch was her own personal kitty cave. Reliant managed to eat a softball sized hole in the creaky arm from the comfort of his kennel. Plus the material on the seat and back of the couch was starting to look pretty threadbare, and the cushion was getting saggy. It was slowly becoming clear that we were going to need a new couch at some point in the near future.
This however, is a huge problem for us. If you’ve been on the Jungled Up train for a minute, you’ve read all about how we have a hard time agreeing on buying any kind of furniture used for seating, so I knew trying to find a new couch was going to suck. I spent a ton of time looking at furniture. I hated like 80% of everything. 10% of what I liked was too expensive and not curvy enough for Seth. 10% of it was absurdly expensive but probably interesting enough for him, so still unacceptable to him because of the price. I fell into a deep, sofa-related depression (not really, but it was pretty distracting). I found myself wishing I could just get a new sofa that was the same as our old sofa, but not beat up and maybe not red because it’s not one of my favorite colors. At some point, I realized I COULD have that, because I already have our old couch, which is for the most part still very sturdy, and there is such a thing as reupholstery!
I wish I could say I was brave enough to tackle the project of reupholstering our sofa myself (I did dining room chairs, so how different could it be?) but I am not, and I did not. I don’t know the first thing about how a sofa, especially one with so much wood detailing comes apart or goes back together, so I called a few professionals. Two quoted me $1000 for labor, not including the cost of fabric, but one (John’s Upholstery in Livonia, for those of you that are local) only quoted $550 plus fabric, so I obviously checked a bunch of online reviews of the place and then decided to go with their services once I was satisfied that they’d do a good job.
I stopped by John’s Upholstery on a Friday, assuming I’d have a quick chat with someone about fabric options and colors, I’d put down a deposit, and be on my merry way in like an hour. Ha! I will start by saying John’s is very old school. You walk in and almost the whole place is a work room. It does not look anything like I pictured. To the left is a door to a little office, where you will find the owner more often than not. I sat down to talk with him, and he quoted me the same labor as over the phone. He then gave me helpful advice such as “no leather for this couch” (duh), and that he’d choose “a chenille or a velvet perhaps”. When I asked what would stand up well to pets, he waved a hand and said basically everything they make nowadays is pretty good. He then sent me to a room off to the right of the front door to look at fabric swatches. I was a little annoyed at the lack of help, but when I entered the swatch room, I immediately understood why he left me to my own devices. There were books upon books of swatches lined up along the walls and on top of and inside a giant island in the middle of the room. There must have been over 50,000 fabric swatches in there. That might be a conservative estimate. I spent three hours poring over fabric swatches. I found one that I liked alright about three swatch books in, but set it aside in the hope of finding something better. I did find two swatches I liked better, both in the same color as the first, but in a great soft velvet texture…and they cost $125 and $200 a yard. At 11 yards for the couch, plus the labor, that put both of those options at over $2000 for the job after tax. In the end, I went with the swatch that I chose in that third book, which cost about $50 a yard and put the job at $1226. Is that a lot of money? Yes. But it is less than the cost of any couches we would have actually agreed on, and it is also less than or similar to couches of similar style and quality to our actual couch (except those usually come in butt ugly fabric).
John’s delivery men came and hauled our couch away on a Wednesday. Twelve days later, they were hauling it back into our living room, and guys, it’s BEAUTIFUL! I had a moment of panic about four days after they picked it up, where I just thought “Oh god I picked a terrible fabric! What was I thinking?! This couch is gonna look awful and we’ll be stuck with it forever because it cost a fortune!” I was wrong though. It looks bomb.com.
In short, here are a few tips if you’re thinking about reupholstery as an option for you:
- If your couch has good bones, or is an antique/heirloom, you may prefer to reupholster it instead of buying a new piece of furniture. If it doesn’t or it’s not, just get a new one.
- If buying a piece similar to the one you’d like to reupholster costs more than the reupholstery job, just keep your old piece and spruce it up!
- Call multiple businesses for quotes. I would have paid much more for the same job if I had just went with the first business I looked up.
- Be prepared to spend a lot of time looking at fabric swatches, and make sure you have a general color palette or style in mind. I knew exactly what color I wanted, and it still took me three hours!
- Be prepared to be couchless for a week or two (the dogs were so confused).
- Be prepared to spend a good chunk of change. Reupholstery isn’t easy to do well, and the nicer the fabric you want to use, the more costly the job will be.
I hope that settles any doubts for those of you who are thinking of reupholstery as an option. We are so happy we chose to reupholster!