Well my goal to complete all the sanding on the sofa this past weekend fell a bit short... despite putting in a good 7 or 8 hours of work on it. Grrr! But I've been waiting to share some photos from the "deconstruction" phase so here we go!
Remember how it looked originally? Well first I flipped it over and started with the bottom. If you choose to do a project like this yourself make sure to look at your furniture carefully to decide what order the pieces should come off in. Usually you start with the bottom, as was the case with my sofa. Memorize the order in which you take everything off (or take lots of pictures!) since that is the order in which you should put all your new material back on.
There were two layers of black material to pull off... meaning I also got to pull out two layers of staples. Whoo-hoo! Typically there is only one layer of material but I think the previous owner added the second layer to cover up a hole in the first. After neatly pulling out every staple ripping off the material and staples I was left with this:
Now comes the scary, no-turning-back part... I started peeling (okay, I was still ripping) the old material off beginning with what was stapled to the bottom. I had to be somewhat careful though so I could use the old material as a pattern for my new material. Once the bottom edges were free I was able to stand it upright. Before I could continue taking the material completely off I had to remove the welting (strip of material that hides the staples) which came off in two pieces: the back welting and the front welting. From there I was able to continue taking the material on the back off. Since the sofa's arms round into the back this part came off in one piece. Here's what I found underneath:
There was also a layer of batting between the old material and this black material but I forgot to take a picture. Next I took the black material off of the back since you can't take any of the front material off without doing so:
See the gray strip running along the bottom of the back of the sofa? That's the material from the seat. They pulled it through the back and staple it in place. This is why I had to take the black material off in order to take the front material off. Here's a close up:
The back of the sofa looked a little frightening since the backrest has so much tufting. Each of the puffs of batting represents a button on the other side. I read that they tie the knot over batting like this so that the knot holding the button in place doesn't pop through the material.
When I think about putting my new material back on the tufting part is probably what makes me the most nervous. The original material was creased so perfectly around the buttons... if I can't get that part right I'm worried it will make the whole makeover look bad. At least the arms didn't look very complicated:
Who would have thought the insides would contain basic things like cardboard and string? After taking aaaaall those buttons out I was able to take the material off the front of the sofa. And here it is in its semi-naked glory:
And here's her old, stinky, stained, rotten material:
Yuck. I really wanted to just throw it away.
So beyond that I don't have much progress to show off. Every night after work I've been spending about an hour working on sanding the sofa but it's taking forever. Hopefully this weekend I can make some major progress. Sanding is the worst part of any project. It's just dust and finger cramps.
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