Painted Couch

Well, it happened. I joined the ranks of the crazy people who looked at their couch and thought, "I should paint that." I had seen a few examples of people painting their couches online, and after reading all of them, I decided I would just forgo the textile medium and just use latex paint. My reasoning was that latex paint was already very flexible, so I wouldn't need the medium for that. Also people use the medium to heat set the fabric, but from what I know about that stuff, it's to set the paint so it doesn't wash out in the washing machine. And I'm not throwing my couch into the washing machine any time soon. This whole thing happened when I went to Goodwill to look for a coffee table or dresser. So of course I found an awesome love seat and couch that I couldn't just leave there. The only bad things about them were the grandma floral fabric and broken springs. Both easily fixable. I made sure we would be able to get them home somehow (we have a small sedan... not really fit for transporting a love seat and a couch) and then bought those suckers. Here's a breakdown of this project:

Love seat and couch - $115

Uhaul(we need a truck...) - $55

Oops paint (grey, eggshell finish) - $5

 Total - $175

Really, I only painted the love seat, so I didn't know if I should include the couch in the prices and everything, but I did anyway. If you wanted to split up the couch cost and Uhaul cost between both couches, it would be around $90 for this love seat project. Anyway, here's a picture of these guys at Goodwill:

I didn't get any other decent before pictures of the love seat unfortunately because I was so excited about ripping the bottom out to fix the springs. I didn't get any pictures of that process, but it was pretty easy. I removed the legs and the fabric on the bottom and it revealed that one of the serpentine springs had come loose. Easy fix. I just used some pliers to work it back into place. I'll try to get some pictures of the big couch when I work on it so you guys can see what I'm talking about.

I had planned to paint the legs so when I had taken them off to fix the springs, I slapped a few coats of some white spray paint that I had laying around. I ended up leaving the legs off the couch for the entirety of the project so I didn't have to worry about taping them off.

Here is everything before I started painting. I got some "oops" paint from Lowe's for just $5. It was almost $20 off. Super awesome deal, it was in the color I wanted, the finish I wanted and was the only miss-mixed paint that they had at that moment. It was meant to be.

I knew I had to take it slow... I wanted to err on the side of more layers rather than less. Patience is rewarded. If I had just tried to slap it all on in one coat, it would end up blotchy and uneven. What I ended up doing was three layers. Layer one was about half water and half paint. Layer two was about 1/4 water and 3/4 paint and the last was only paint. This process worked out well for me. Of course, I cleaned the crap out of this thing before painting. It took a while because the couch has deep tufts and a lot of wrinkles and folds that I made sure to really get in to.

First things first, I took a small brush and tackled the tufting. I made sure I pulled each fold open and painted in there too. I didn't want people to sit on the couch, only for the folds to shift and expose flowers underneath the grey.

After getting in to the tufting and folds, I painted one layer over the whole couch. For the broad areas of the couch, I used a foam roller.

Day one, layer one. You can still see the colors from the fabric showing through.

Day two, layer two. Getting better. The fabric isn't showing through -as- much, but the paint is also pretty blotchy.

Day three, layer three. Pretty much right after painting. The wet paint is slightly lighter than what it ended up drying to. I waited a day to make sure the paint was completely dry, and then reattached the legs.

And here she is! I love how it turned out. It has a neat texture now. It's slightly shiny and at certain angles you can see the flower pattern of the  fabric. Not the colors, mind you, but the way the fabric was woven.

A lot of people question whether or not painting a couch is a feasible option because they think the fabric will get "crunchy." I knew this was a possibility, but I figured that since I wanted to change the fabric anyway I could just try this painting thing out and if it didn't work I could just reupholster it, especially since the paint I got was so cheap. As of right now, the couch is kind of "crunchy" but it's been getting better as it's being used, which I expected to happen. So for the foreseeable future, this thing is staying painted.

All in all, it was a neat project that I saw somewhere and knew I had to try for myself. The original plan was to paint both couches, but I've recently decided that I wanted to try my hand at reupholstering the big couch. I thought it would be a neat dichotomy to take the matching couches and show an example of the painted couch, and an example of a reupholstered couch.

I hope you all enjoyed my painted couch journey!

Making an Ugly Sofa Beautiful

A few months ago, my boyfriend and I uprooted and moved one state over.  It was fairly short notice, so we just packed as much as we could into an SUV and drove to our new apartment. The only "furniture" we could fit in the car was a fold up table, tiny folding chairs and a blow up mattress. After living like this for a few days, I was finally able to go out to find a sofa. I ended up finding this nice camel back sofa with lion feet legs.

Isn't it beautiful?! Not. It had the ugliest slip cover, but a quick glance at the underlying fabric and I fell in love.

This is the story of how this ugly sofa turned into a beautiful piece of furniture.

I really wanted a darker colored sofa, but I figured I could paint it a la this tutorial and still have the pattern of the fabric show though. Unfortunately, when I got the couch home and removed the slip cover completely, there were a few problems.

The cushion was only covered by the fabric from the ugly picnic slip cover fabric. Yuck. While I brainstormed about what I could do, I just wrapped up the foam with an extra bed sheet cover. You probably noticed that the cushion looks bigger here than in the first picture, and that is true! I was able to score 4 pieces of high density upholstery foam for just $40. I was so excited. I ended up using two pieces on the couch and I'm going to use the other pieces to reupholster a little chaise lounge I got. But that will be a different post.

But back to updating the sofa - the first thing I thought I could do was to stick with the original plan and paint the couch. I figured I could paint it and then buy enough (almost) matching fabric to make a new cover for the cushion. Sadly this couldn't happen because I noticed small tears in the fabric that would eventually tear more and more as we used it. That must have been why they slip covered it in the first place.

The second thing I thought I'd try was to attempt to dye the slip cover black. I felt as though that was the only color that could cover the ugliness of it or at least tone it down so the plaid wasn't too bad (a.k.a. too noticeable). After ordering a bunch of dye only to accidently lose half of it down the drain before I even started dyeing the fabric and then having the fabric not take any of the color (yay for rushing things and not figuring out what kind of fabric it was) I decided to try a different tactic.

I found this tutorial and thought that this is the one that I'll do and I will make it work no matter what. I ordered quite a lot of this dark purple upholstery fabric and got to work.

I cut up the slip cover to make a rough pattern for the pieces and to take out the piping cording so I could remake piping in the new fabric. This picture shows after I sewed on the arm pieces.

And here it is almost done! It stayed like this for a while because, even though it was only a few straight lines I had to sew for the cushion, I kept psyching myself out. I only had enough fabric to attempt this once, and I was sure I would mess it up somehow. Eventually I decided to get the cushion done, so I glued the foam together so it would appear to be just one big piece of foam, I crossed my fingers and sewed up a huge rectangle. Thank. God. It fit. I had to enlist the help of the boyfriend to get the cover on, as the cushion is a foot taller than me, but we crammed it in there and it ended up being a perfect fit.

And here it is complete (or almost... I'm really tempted to paint the legs white)! I love it so much! I wish I had just skipped the whole dyeing debacle and went straight to this, but it all worked out in the end.