Reduce, reuse, and reupholster that sofa

The night before garbage pickup, whose thieving hands haven't surreptitiously liberated an abandoned chair from an alleyway? Ever volunteered to adopt the beat-up sofa a friend is throwing out, telling yourself you'll give it a face-lift? Then reality hits. First you start pricing the sort of fabrics you lust after in Architectural Digest and find that that luscious eggplant chenille is $130 a metre at Chintz & Company (950 Homer Street; for their bargains, keep reading). Then you start scouting. Specializing in slipcovers that make furniture “look basically reupholstered”, Tammy Maltese, who comes to your home and makes patterns on-site (see her work at www.slipcoversvancouver.com/) says reviving a typical three-seater sofa (i.e., straight lines and no fussy details) runs $500 to $550 for labour, an armchair averages $250 (with wingbacks between $275 and $300), and dining chairs with piping details and floor-length lined skirts are $85 each. Factor in that chenille and you realize that freebie seating, like that free kitten you took in, isn't such a bargain.

On the topic of cats, the late Shadow and the ever-present Ariel have wreaked severe damage on our funky old shell-back sofa. It cost serious money to re-cover it initially, so I simply patch clawed areas and the sun-bleached bits every so often and wish we owned seating built along simpler lines. The boxier the sofa, the easier it is to disguise its condition. Neatly tucking a Mexican serape over the back works wonders on a straight-back model, whereas it just looks sloppy on something curvy with wood trim, not to mention out of character.

Even if the thought terrifies you, you can probably reupholster your sofa yourself. Investing in the aforementioned eggplant chenille for a maiden voyage probably isn't a wise idea, nor is choosing a large pattern that needs to be matched. Stripes and checks? Don't even go there, but do go cheap. Chintz & Company often has discontinued fabrics on sale from $10 a metre. The Textile Clearance House (5550 Fraser Street) charges $6 to $10 a yard. Dressew Supply (337 West Hastings Street) carries rolls and rolls of upholstery fabrics woven from the textile equivalent of mystery meat, “unknown fibres”. Scary, but actually these corduroys, brocades, and tweed effects do look like the kind of fabric you normally see on sofas, and bear in mind that even brutally vivid prints can be subtle if you use them inside out. Besides, you can bet the fabric on public-transit seats the world over isn't natural, and look at the 24/7 abuse it has to take. Every Dressew roll I checked cost $9.99 a metre. So ballpark the cost at $100 for fabric, since the average two-seater sofa calls for nine metres to cover its rips and stains.

A curved needle is cheap (I found mine in a multipurpose pack at the dollar store) but invaluable for getting you into, and out of, tight corners. The Foam Shop (various locations) has loads of what you need to soften edges and seats, from a half-inch to six inches deep. You can pick the staff's brains, and they'll cut your purchase to measure. After that, you're pretty much on your own, because how-tos are hard to come by. My bible, Dorothy Gates's The Essential Guide to Upholstery, is out of print except in Spanish (the English version is available on Amazon.com and Abebooks.com, at prices that suggest how useful it is) and I've yet to find comprehensive information on the Internet. It's mostly dribs and drabs designed to lure you into buying videos or on-line courses. But you can do it yourself as long as you keep in mind that this is not about achieving a skintight fit with intricate piping and a button back; it's masking something so hideous you can't coexist with it any longer.

Straight contributor Judith Lane recently inherited a four-seater 1960s sofa that has been in her family for years and gave it what she thinks is its fourth new cover. This was her first attempt at reviving a sofa, but she had previously redone her office chair. For the sofa, she chose a dark-chocolate hide, about 55 square feet of which she bought at Pacific Leather (3862 Commercial Drive) for $320. “I recycled all of the old leather…which had covered six cushions plus the couch seat. This plus the new skin was enough to do the couch [the back is patchwork since it's always against the wall] and matching chair.” First she stapled on the little skirt that hangs from the seat to the ground. Then she stretched, wrapped, and stapled the leather over the body of the sofa. Finally, using the originals as a pattern, she sewed the cushion covers on a semi-industrial Pfaff sewing machine with a special three-sided needle. Lane has experience working in leather; first-timers would find fabric easier to work with, but the principle's the same. Use the old cover as a pattern, and don't be shy about wielding that staple gun.

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