My Newest Project–Part 3 of 3–Fail!

Back in December I posted here and here about my hatred for my current living room furniture and my desire to do something about it. I had grand plans of recovering it in an economic yet fashionable way and making it look like a million bucks on a budget. Kind of a Bite-Me-Martha thing.

Yeah, well… so much for that. 

I got the chair cushions done. Twice.  After an accident with a sippy cup and some red soda it needed to be done again. Then I got the sofa cushions totally done. I got most of the ottoman cover done (Still working on that due to a slight “design flaw”.) And that’s about where the project stopped.  The thought of tearing apart the couch was daunting.  I wanted to do it. I know that with a little bit of help and some time I could do it. But having the help and the confidence is where I fell short.  Damn it. 

I was recently told that I “get really excited about stuff and then it just fades away”. This was not done as constructive criticism but pointed out as a glaring character flaw. This is something that really hurt my feelings and stuck with me.  It made it difficult when faced with what to do with the couch when I realized that I had bitten more than I could currently chew. 

Admitting defeat is not something I do well. I will say that I do tend to take on a lot at one time. Projects, commitments, just general to-do crap.  Admitting when maybe that list has gotten to be more than I can handle is not something that I’m good at.  I am controlling. I am demanding. I know that. I think it comes from growing up and having almost no control over the chaos in my life. Or not knowing how to control it. And then moving into adulthood and a marriage that was equally beyond my control.  So here I am, at 34, a self-proclaimed Control Freak. It would be in good taste to say that I’m working on it, but let’s be realistic – I’m not. Nor do I really have any intention of it. Isn’t admitting you have a problem the first step?  Screw the other steps, I’ve got too much else to do.

So, to come back from Tangent Land…

The living room furniture will not be recovered in some uber-snazzy, look-how-crafty way.   Thank you to Target clearance and Overstock.com I purchased two slipcovers.  The couch now looks fantastic!  The slipcover actually solved one of my biggest pet peeves about the couch. Because the seat cushions are not connected to the couch in any way they are constantly needing readjusting. Something that seems beyond the ability of my children/husband to see or fix (how you don’t notice you’re sitting on a cushion that is hanging off the furniture by 3 inches is beyond me). The slip cover holds them nicely in place and only requires a daily re-tuck! *insert angels singing here*  In about 2 minutes I took my icky couch and made it into something that I could really love. Why the hell didn’t I do this months ago? Oh, that whole control thing. Right.   The cover for the chair will be here on Thursday. 

I will be posting pictures once everything is here and together.  We’re working on re-doing the floors, too. But, that’s another post all it’s own.

My Newest Project - Part 2 of...

Part 1 was getting a little long, so I thought I'd break it up a bit. 
I did get started right away yesterday.  I'm struggling to not drop everything for the next week and finish it. So I'm going as I can. Hopefully it doesn't take too long.  I did warn Doug that our living room is going to be in a state of half-mess until I get this done. He said he's fine with it. (Can anyone find me the process for declaring someone a living saint please?)
So I didn't have the sense to start taking pictures before I started tearing things apart.  Oh well. 
I figured I would start on the chair first. It's a little easier - read smaller - than the couch, but will give me more impact than the ottoman.  I removed the cover from the back cushion and pulled the seams apart. I wanted to use it for a basic pattern and to make sure I got the size of everything right. Then I ironed the pieces and cut the fabric.  Putting in the pleats was challenging.  But, when you're trying to put 12 layers of fabric through a home sewing machine, your bound to find some problems.  I was able to salvage the zippers that were already there.  Which is great, and something I didn't think to do when I was planning all this. But, they're the right size and are actually pretty easy to work with, plus they're FREE!  I was really  happy with how the back cushion came out. The pleats don't match up perfectly on one of the corners, but it's really not something you can tell.  I think I need to add some more batting to it.
The T cushion was a little harder. Getting the cover off to make the pattern was a pain in the ass! Those things are on there SNUG! But after some cussing and pulling I was able to get it off.  The T cushion was a little more difficult to sew.  The rounded edges in a box shape is complicated. But I made it work.  I came into a little bit of an issue at the end when I was trying to finish off the zipper. It just wasn't matching up right. So I put the cover on the cushion - it looks awesome - and figured out what the issue was. When you're cutting pattern pieces from an old cushion there are a couple things to keep in mind. The pattern is not exact like from the factory. I cut a little wide to give myself some bigger seams.  Also, I was patterning from a piece of material that was not in the best of conditions.  It was frayed, worn and stretched out.  So, I'll be closing up the final hem by hand.  I think it made putting it on a little easier so I'm not going to complain. It's the back of the cushion anyway so no one will ever see it.
So, here is what I have finished so far. It took about 6 hours. I wanted to start pulling the couch cushions apart to be ready to start today but my right hand was hurting too much to mess with the scissors (I have arthritis in that hand and pregnancy induced carpal tunnel - whee.) Let me know what you think!

You can see the sorry state of the rest of the chair. The shape is good, but there is no amount of cleaning that will help that.

Here's the sorry looking couch in it's full "Before" glory.  This is generally what my couch looks like.  Now you know what I'm dealing with.

So that's it folks. I'll be updating and uploading more pictures as I go along.  Hopefully it doesn't take too long. I would like this done before the baby comes. (That was totally sarcastic, I swear)

My Newest Project - Part 1 of...

I hate my couch. There, I said it.
Let me clarify a bit. I hate the state of my couch. It's dirty. It's fraying at the edges.  The couch itself is great. We were given the set - couch, chair and ottoman - by some friends when they got a new couch.  I thought then that I could "easily reupholster" it. Not one of my brighter thoughts I know. If my mom and my aunt can spend a drunken weekend reupholstering a couch and have it turn out great I can do it, too. Right?
I have been hit with an urge to nest lately that would send even the most non-OCD person into a tizzy.  So I look around my house and see all the things that need to be done. Plus, we are trying really hard to move to another state and transfer Doug's job (more on that in another post I'm sure).  That has me in a moving mindset. Not a good place for a nesting preggo to be. All I can do is look around and see the things that need to be organized, donated, updated or cleaned.  The fact that I'm not on anything stronger than Welbutrin is a miracle.
So the couch has been taunting me. There's only so much I can do with it. I can't scrub it. I could but it wouldn't do much could. Who is the dumbass that makes white couches anyway?  We talked about getting new couches and realized that it just wasn't practical.  We could spend $500 and go to the cheap furniture stores and get something that looks nice, but won't last but a couple of years. We have four full size people, soon to have two little kids, two dogs and two cats. Our furniture receives a pretty good beating.  We could go to somewhere like Thomasville or Broyhill and spend $2000 plus on a good set of furniture and hope to get eight years out of it.  Quite honestly, the thought of spending $2000 on anything right now is not something I'm interested in. And I do like our couches. I like the shapes, I like the style. They're deep enough to be comfortable for my long-legged husband. They're comfy. They're long enough that Doug can actually lay down on them and not be uncomfortable. Plus, if you take the back cushions off they're perfect for us to lay together and watch a movie, or for someone to sleep on if we have a surprise overnight guest. OK, like that last one ever happens, but it could. So, to my frugal way of thinking, why get rid of a perfectly good couch when I can just recover it?
Is it going to look new? Probably not. Showroom quality? No friggin' way. But it's something that will work for our family and not cost a ton of money.  So I made the decision to reupholster it and started the research.  If you know me you know that I've spent HOURS on the internet reading and shopping and soaking up everything I could possibly find out about reupholstering furniture.  I thought about just making a slipcover and realized that it'd probably be less work just to actually cover the whole thing - so scrap that idea.  Then I started researching fabric and pricing the stuff. Holy tapestry, Batman! That stuff is expensive. I'm looking at roughly 20 - 25 yards of fabric. Good upholstery fabric can run anywhere from about $10 a yard UP! WAY UP. Like $30+ a yard up. Screw a bunch of that! So I started to look at how to bring down the cost without sacrificing the quality.  
Insert trumpets here...Coupons! D'uh. Did you really think I'd get into this project without coupons?  JoAnn's fabric runs 50% off coupons pretty frequently. And the cotton duck fabric is usually about $10 a yard - so really $5 a yard. That I can handle. I found a good spot in the budget to pull the money out of and yesterday headed off to the fabric store. Now, I had a basic idea in mind. I wanted a chocolate brown for the couch itself.  Then something in a blue to go with the beach-y theme that I'm trying to pull off in my living room.  I didn't have anything really set in stone, but I know what I like and I'm pretty good putting colors together so off I went.   I ended up with 10 yards of a chocolate brown duck for the couch, and 5 yards of steel blue for the chair. I bought a big floral blue/tan swirly thing for the ottoman. Of course, sometime over the course of the project I decided to use the floral that I bought for the ottoman for the cushions on the sofa.  It all pulls together nicely.
We'll see what the finished product look like!  Lots of pictures to come.