Unsolicited Advice: Reupholstering a Victorian Style Sofa (Part 2)

All hail the amateur.

Part 2: Stripping the Old Sofa  (You can find Part 1 here)

The first step of course is to strip off the old upholstery, and once you start- you will pass the point of no return (so now is the time to put down the tack puller, and put this project off for another year, maybe go read that book you've been putting down too much).

If you're ready to start, here's my advice at this stage of the process:

1. It's going to be dusty, and messy, so if you have space away from where you live- move the sofa there.

2. Schedule enough time to strip the whole piece of furniture (like an afternoon), once you start there will be tacks, and coir, and particles of all sorts all over the place- it's best to get it all cleaned up at once.

3. You may want a dust mask.

4. Get a shop-vac or vacuum ready, and plenty of trash bags, it's amazing how much crap can come out of an old sofa.

5. Take a lot of very detailed pictures of the piece before you start. Be sure to get any details you want to replicate with the new job but may forget. Get pictures of any folds, or placements of fabrics that are not intuitive (for example the bottom fabric may wrap around the arm just so). Also be sure to capture the placement of any ornaments, trims, etc., you want to return.

You may want to try to remove the outer fabric as whole as you can, as having the fabric reasonably intact makes for a rough template when you need to size out the new fabric (don't stress yourself about this step however, it's not hard to estimate the fabric needed- so you should feel free to go all animal on the couch if you want to and just shred the fabric off).

A note on measuring for new fabric: You'll do just fine keeping it really simple. Measure all of the surfaces horizontally and get the length of each surface in inches. Add all those inches up (for example: bottom = 53", upper front = 53", upper back = 54", sum = 160") and then divide by 36. That's how many inches are in a yard, so 160" of surface = 4.44 yards, rounded up to 4 1/2 yards. That should do it, and it should leave you plenty for small details like arm rests, etc.

I find it easiest to just tear off the fabric starting with the back, using a knife. It's a little fun to get in there and just rip off some fabric, so enjoy this part. The hard part is yet to come, once you have all the fabric, and stuffing off, you'll need to pull out all of the tacks/staples/nails that you can.

You'll need to remove layers of material...

Get all of the soft material off.

Regarding the springs and webbing: If after inspecting the webbing you find that it's perfect, I would still recommend you replace it. The webbing has a natural degradation time, if it hasn't failed- it's probably about to. If you really don't want to, and find that all the springs are tied together nicely... your very lucky. You'll need to remove all of the spring ties as well.

Surviving string ties that haven't been removed yet.

Now that you have all of the soft material off, you will probably have strips of fabric "remains" all around the edges, tacked in tightly. 

Take out the bottom in this order: Cut the strings tied to all the springs, and remove it completely, cut the springs off the webbing, and then cut out all the webbing.

Now a tack puller is your friend. These are the steps I have personally found the most pain free:

1. Go around the edges (wherever the tacks are) and pull up the remaining strips of fabric with a pair of needle nose pliers, ideally, a lot of the tacks will come out with it.

2. Go around the piece and pull out everything you can using the same pliers, just go for the easy tacks here- or anything that is sticking out far.

3. Get comfortable, put on something great to listen to, and using that Great Neck Tack Puller, start pulling out every tack you see.

When you're finished the wood frame should look nice and "nearly" tack-free like this.

The hardest part is over. Rejoice.

Part 3 (Coming Next) New Webbing & Tied Springs.