Loveseat Makeover

In April, I saw my mom coming for my husband's graduation as the PERFECT opportunity to recover a loveseat! We'd been needing more seating in our living room, and I found this wonderful fabric store, Home Fabrics, that has ridiculously cheap decorator fabric. I knew I couldn't tackle that kind of project on my own (seriously, my dresser took months, and all I was doing was painting it!)...so I got my wonderful mother to spend the spare time on her visit helping me take apart and beautify a love seat.

Now here's the part where I'm kicking myself. I hardly even want to say it. I didn't take a before picture. I meant to. I bought it off of an online classifieds website, and thought the picture might still be there when I looked later. NOPE!

So this morning I got back on the classifieds to see if I could find a picture of something equally ugly and worn. Well what I found was slightly uglier than what I bought (but pretty similar) and not nearly as worn. The loveseat I bought was kinda dirty and had spots on the arms and back where someone had tried to sew up some holes that had developed. Anyway, it looked sort of like this:

Did I mention I bought it for $25? Not too shabby.

The first order of business was unscrewing the feet, roughing them up a bit with sandpaper, and spray painting them satin black. Really, after using black spray paint in the satin finish, I know why people rave about it! It is beautiful!

Then, my main job during the project was removing staples to get the old fabric off. Luckily my mom brought this old antique looking tool that's used for something related to beekeeping...some kind of scraper... Anyway, that made removing staples A LOT easier.

We used the old fabric as a pattern for the new fabric, which I failed to mention earlier I got for $3 a yard. I KNOW. I told you it was ridiculously cheap. And it's nice thick, sturdy fabric.

Luckily, my mom did what I call the hard part: All of the brain work, and sewing. (She even made the back cushions match the shape of our couch cushions!) She said I did the hard part, the aforementioned staple removing. I also helped with cutting fabric, and putting in new staples. I know, it's like I cheated at this project, since I didn't do it by myself. Oh well, I don't feel bad about it! Because look how it turned out!!!


That piece of fabric is the original fabric. I took this picture when I realized I hadn't taken a before. I think the couch is pretty dang loverly for $50! Really, it is exaclty what I wanted! Thanks Mom, you're THE BEST!


So, somehow I completely MISSED the Goodwill party on Thrifty Decor Chick's blog yesterday. Not sure how I managed to not even know about it, since that's one of the blogs I read regularly. So I'm linking up a day late. I'm also linking to the Trash to Treasure party at Reinvented and 2nd Time Around Tuesday from A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words. Stop by those sites and check out everyone else's projects!