A Place to Settee!!

My cousin has been learning to upholster at the same time I have. She brought over her own project and we would work on my project for a while and then work on her project. Unlike me, she is smart and chose something that wasn't a sofa for her first project. Her project was a settee that her dad gave to her. I can remember sitting on this when we were small children. Here are some before pictures.

As you can see it's a beautiful piece of furniture. However, with the burnt orange velvet upholstery it was stuck in the 70's. The first thing we did of course was take off the old upholstery. Then since it was a little wobbly we went about trying to strengthen the frame. We put some glue on the joints and then strapped a belt around it to keep it in place while the glue dried. We made sure to put something on the top side of the belt so that the furniture wouldn't be scratched.

I find the insides of furniture fascinating (that's the sofa in the background).

After we took off the bottom and removed the old upholstery we took the bottom board and traced around a new piece of foam (the old was too degraded to be re-used). To cut the foam it is best to use an electric knife. No joke, an electric knife! This is a trick my mom learned in her upholstery classes.

We took our piece of foam and sprayed it with a spray adhesive. Next we covered it with a piece of bonded polyester cushion wrap. If you are using this spray adhesive be sure to work fast. Also, it is a little hard to remove from your hands with plain soap and water, but it will come off easily with nail polish remover.

Next we covered the foam and poly with the cushion cover we had made from our chosen fabric.

To cover the inside back we first put back on the old cotton batting and measured for our fabric.

We found the point we had designated as the center of our fabric and pinned it in place.

Next we spread out our fabric and started stapling around the edges.

Once we had stapled around the fabric we cut off the excess.

This piece has double cording so we hot glued it on.

And here is the final product. Much, MUCH improved!!