Once upon a year, probably around 2015, I decided to fix the upholstery on my living room furniture which was peeling. This was "bonded leather" which apparently means it has some substance stuck on top of the leather to make it pretty and shiny.
When the bond substance started to peel off, the furniture all looked sort of diseased. In addition, in some places the leather had torn due to the children abusing it, and the furniture itself needed a few internal repairs to the wood.
I started by measuring to make sure I had enough fabric. I wanted to make this look really good so I tried to overestimate and in fact I do still have fabric left over from this project. I think the fabric I bought online for a deep discount cost over $500. That just shows you how expensive the good upholstery fabric can be.
For this project, I knew I had to have velvet because anything fuzzy contributes greatly to my happiness. Velvet gets worn easily, attracts lint and is also notoriously difficult to sew but I didn't care and still don't even though it's pretty worn now.
All the books said I needed not only a power stapler (can you imagine using a manual stapler to reupholster a 3-piece living room suite? Sounds wretchedly painful & slow) but I needed a special stapler just for upholstery.
- Regular electric staplers do not have enough power to get the staple all the way, so I would need to buy a compressor
- Even a pneumatic stapler not specifically for upholstery would not have a long enough snout to reach into the far corners of the furniture between padding
- These staplers cost about $200, but I was able to get a compressor on sale for only about $35
Next time I'll go into how I got started and how.
Have a blessed day!
--Pam Crouch