How to Avoid Making Upholstery Mistakes

A DIY upholstery project can be fun, rewarding, and leave you satisfied with a resurrected and unique item of furniture that reflects you and your personality. 

Unfortunately, if you’re inexperienced, an unsuccessful job can leave you deflated and surrounded by ruined materials, wasted accessories, and even furniture that is more damaged than when you started.

It’s easy to make mistakes, but luckily, that is only the truly worst-case scenario. Plus, with proper preparation and planning, you can avoid any frustrating upholstery dramas.

To help you dodge any mishaps, here are some useful tips…

Getting Prepared

The first thing you’ll need to do to reduce the risk of making mistakes is to get everything prepared. This includes prepping both the piece you will be working on and making sure you’ve got all the tools you need to minimise accidents and make the upholstery process a breeze. 

Upholstery Tool Checklist 

A common mistake is using the wrong tools, such as ones that aren’t upholstery specific. This could lead to doing more harm than good. To make sure you’re using the right tools for the job, here’s a list of essential upholstery supplies that are must haves for the majority of projects:

• Fabric scissors
• Measuring tape
• Foam padding
• Batting
• Fabric (upholstery-grade)
• Upholstery thread and needles
• Tack lifter
• Upholstery hammer
• Adhesive spray
• Webbing (if needed)
• Upholstery stapler and staples
• upholstery staple puller

In the list above there are a few tools that can help either prevent mistakes or undo them. 

Certain tools such as the staple puller may help you to gently remove any mistakenly misaligned staples, this should hopefully minimise any damage than if you were to do it more destructively without the proper tool.

Prepping Your Furniture

Before you start the refresh, you’ll need to check over what you’re currently working with and identify what needs doing…

Remove Staples and Old Fabric

First of all, if you’re completely overhauling the current material covering rather than fixing patches with a matching fabric, you’ll need to remove all of the old fabric. 

To remove the fabric, you’ll also need to remove all the old staples too, so use a staple puller to make this job easy. Then, you’ll be able to pull, peel, tear, or just take off all of the fabric, which will leave the frame completely bare.

Make sure you remove all old staples. If you miss any, you’ll find them getting in your way and causing fabric to sit unevenly when you recover the frame.

Maintain the Frame

With the frame bare, you may want to do some work on it too, whilst you have the chance. Sand any rough spots (if the frame is made of wood). You can also clean the frame and wipe away dust or any chipped paint, opting to add a fresh coat of paint if desired. 

Knowing that your frame is in as good condition as the outside will eventually be will give you peace of mind for the future. The last thing you want to do is go to all the effort of making the outside look good, and then have the frame break, causing the furniture to collapse inward.

The frame is the skeleton of your piece, and provides support, so don’t neglect it.

Repairs and Replacements

Examine all other parts of the piece. Tighten screws, glue loose joints back together, and remove and replace any broken springs.

You’ll then want to check if your current padding is still in good condition. If it’s squashed, worn down and lost its shape, it’s time to replace it with new foam or batting. 

Get the Padding Right

Make sure you choose the right padding for your piece, if it’s a sofa that gets sat on a lot by many people or for long periods of time, you’ll want firm and durable padding on the seats with softer, comfortable padding on the back cushions.

Choose a Suitable Fabric (and Attach it Properly)

Sometimes you’ll get an idea in your head for a colour, product, or in this case, a type of product that sounds great. But then you soon realise that the idea you got attached to sounded better on paper than it did in practise. 

If you have a particular idea in mind for your fabric, research the pros and cons of it. Including things like its durability and suitability for its intended use.

Once you’ve picked a fabric and pattern that makes sense, make sure to invest time getting measurements just right, so that it isn’t stretched and that it can be stapled accurately. You don’t want to risk ruining the new fabric or misaligning it. 

Final Thoughts

By following the above tips and practising a bit of patience, you’ll be able to achieve near professional looking results that will both last long and represent your uniqueness.