Reupholstered Sofa

As I have mentioned before I have a tendency to take things that others are throwing away and fix them up for my house. So naturally when my husband found an old love seat on Craig's List that someone was giving away for free, he thought that it would be the perfect Christmas gift for me.
Now... I have reupholstered things before but I have never undertaken anything of this scale and I have to say NEVER AGAIN!
Reupholstering a couch is not really that complicated but it is certainly not for the faint of heart. (As I quickly found out.)
It takes determination and hard work to pull all the old fabric off and to remember how to put it back on if you have never done it before. Once you start, there is no turning back. You have to press on and finish.
This is what I had to start out with...

and this is what I had two days after pulling out what must have been thousands of staples and three bandaged fingers latter...

It was time consuming and painful but if you want to be efficient and have a pattern to follow when you are done you can't just start ripping fabric off.
Starting at the back of the couch, every piece I took off I saved to use later so that I knew what shape and size I need to cut out of the new fabric. They became the pattern pieces for the new fabric.

I also kept track of the order in which I took the pieces off because that determines the order in which they go back. The first piece I took off was the last piece to put back on and the last piece I took off was the first of the new fabric to put back on. A good tip is to number the pieces as you take them off, cut the corresponding piece out of the new fabric and then work backwards to put the pieces back on.
Once I got all of the fabric of it was time to get new fabric. I chose a raspberry colored fabric in a light weight cotton canvas.
Why raspberry? I'm so glad you asked...
When my husband an I were in the process of buying our first house we looked at furniture and found a raspberry pink, slip covered sofa at Restoration Hardware and my husband, of all people, loved it. (real men love pink couches) : ) We thought it would be a fun statement piece for our new decor. But, alas, by the time we had closed on our house, they had discontinued that color and we went with an evergreen sofa instead.
Every once in a while my husband will say, "I still want my pink sofa." So, in getting me one that I had to reupholster he was really ensuring that our honeymoon dreams of having that Restoration Hardware sofa would come true in some small way. When I asked him what fabric I should use he didn't skip a beat.
This is what the sofa looks like now.

The hard part is done. I still have to finish the bottom skirt to hide the worn legs and sew covers for the cushions but you get the idea and if you ask me it looks fabulous.
A few tips if you want to attempt this yourself:

• When choosing a piece to reupholster look at how many details the piece has. Every place where separate pieces of fabric meet there will be more than one row of staples or tacks. For example my couch had a piping detail so there was a row of staples for the top fabric, then one for the piping, and yet another for the bottom fabric. Three pieces of fabric meeting = three layers = three rows of staples.
• You can eliminate details like piping along the edges in order to simplify the design and make your life easier. I took out the piping all together to have more of a casual slip cover look and I decided to put a skirt on the bottom to hide the legs and eliminate complicated detail.
• Wear safety glasses when pulling out the staples. A staple in the eye is not fun and depending on how old and dirty the piece is you may want to were a dust mask as well. The fabric on my couch was old and had a coating on the back that had became brittle. Even though I vacuumed it thoroughly before I started, every time I pulled a staple out I let loose the coating on the back.
• If you have trouble remembering how the pieces go back on the couch, number them as you take them off and note how they were attached. ie. tack strip, staples.
• Use the old pieces of fabric as a template to cut new fabric.

The finished Product.