Reupholstering a sofa is really not all that difficult. It can certainly take a bit of time to fix up a corner sofa bed and get it looking like new, but you can do it. Often people in the market for a new sofa will dismiss the idea of getting one used. Just because a fabric corner sofa may have a few nicks or tears that does not mean it is garbage. If you have found a sofa that has seen better days and you want to bring it back to life, these are the basic steps you need to follow.
First, you gather your supplies together. You need fabric for one thing. You can either choose to get replacement fabric to get the sofa back to its original state or you may want to change it up. You can pretty well use whatever fabric you want. Leather is the most expensive and durable but does not work well in certain situations. If you have children, they can work but they are not so ideal for pets. Cats and dogs with sharp claws can cause nicks and rips in leather. In these cases, using fabric is probably more ideal.
Choose the fabric you like and get several yards of it. You will only need to cover three sides of the sofa – the front, back and top, plus the pillows.
Besides your fabric you also need a seam ripper, staple gun, rubber mallet, scissors and some cotton batting if the cushions are a bit flat and you want to fluff them up to make them more comfortable to sit on.
Therefore, you have all your supplies with you and are ready to get started. Take the seam ripper and start tearing the existing fabric from off the frame of the sofa. You can recycle this old fabric, at least the parts of it that are any good, and reupholster chairs in your home or throw pillows. Use the scissors to help you along the way until all the fabric has been removed from the couch. The frame should be completely bare at this point.
Start by reupholstering the cushions on the sofa. This is the easiest part of the job. Take the cushions one at a time. Lay a cushion down flat on a piece of the new fabric and cut enough fabric out around the sides that you will be able to fold the pieces over taught all around the pillow. Remember that on a couch you do not need to have both sides completely covered with the fabric. It will save you time and money only to worry about covering the top section.
Once you have the material held around the pillow, and an extra set of hands would really help out here, use the staple gun on the pillow. Put a staple in each of the four corners, and then follow around in a clockwise direction. Staples should be inserted an inch apart around the entirety of each pillow.
Once you have finished on the pillows you can get to work on the sofa itself. You need to cut out pieces of the new fabric for the sofa just as you did for the pillows. One tip is to mark the pieces of fabric before continuing, as this will help you keep track of what pieces go where. The last thing you want is to end up stapling the wrong piece of fabric on one part of the sofa.
Once you have all your pieces cut out, you pull each taught just as you did before, and staple underneath. Make sure the staples are all hidden away so they will not be eyesores. After this, you are finished reupholstering your sofa and it will look as good as new.