Re-upholstery Project (1)

At long last the upholstery project has begun. Before I being the story I would like to tell you about a new concept I learned. There is this idea called the planning fallacy which basically says that when we plan for large projects we don't leave time for unexpected problems. When I read about this concept I thought to myself, yep, that is the story of my life! Every project I undertake ends up taking two or three times longer than I expected.

Back to the story of my sad couch and it's makeover. Below is a photo of the couch in question. I got it for free from Johnson Lambert two years ago. Dana helped me carry the couch from the office on St. Paul Street to my apartment approximately 3.5 blocks away. We looked completely ridiculous carrying a small couch through down town!

The best part wasn't even that we carried the couch through downtown but that when we got to my apartment the couch barely fit through the front door, didn't fit through the second and third door so we had to take them off their hinges and then we couldn't get it into my living room. I was so sick of the couch at that point that I used a hammer to break off the back legs (partially). We were able to get it into the living room and I let poor Dana leave. I promptly went to Lowes and bought a jig saw and legs that I could attach to replace the now jagged broken legs. I successfully removed what remained of the old legs and attached two new back legs.

At that point I also decided to make a slip-type cover for the couch, which was fine in my Church St. apartment, but was rather abused by the cats. When I moved out of Church St. I left this couch on the street for a whole day hoping that someone would take it. To my dismay no one wanted my old couch so I loaded it into my car and brought it to my aunt's house.

During the 8 week stay at my aunt's house I cleaned the upholstery on the couch and it actually came quite clean. Fast forward to moving day...the couch is loaded into the moving truck and we are ready to go, but wait! The cushion...don't forget the cushion! I ran back inside to grab the cushion and noticed that it REEKED of cat pee. My best guess is that my aunt's cat decided to tag my couch before it left. This is the moment that I decided to re-upholster my couch. As you can see it fits exactly into my apartment and this couch and I have some history!