My tutorial on how to re-upholster a sofa!

#1 Find a couch for $15 dollars.  Bring it home until you can find a better one, only to find out it really is a cool couch.  Then wish that it looked better.

#2  Buy the cheapest couch cover possible, which is still $50 to make it look better, only to find out that the black couch cover gets tiny white balls that make the couch look FILTHY ALL the time.

#3 Find some free fabric that you bring home and wish that maybe one day it could work to make your couch look better.

#4 Find a $2 upholstery staple gun and keep wishing.

#5 Pull out the fabric and staple gun when cheap labor (aka parents) comes to visit.

#6 Just start pulling out staples, even though you have no clue on how to re-upholster  anything.

#7 Go to the store to have your dad buy a tool to remove the 2000 staples easier because the screwdriver just wasn't helping enough.

 

 #8 start adding fabric even though your 95% sure that you don't have enough fabric to do the whole couch.

#9 Stand on a chair to get a better angle for stapling and almost stick your head into a MOVING fan.

 

 

 #10 Staple, pull out staples, staple, pull out staples, staple, pull out staples.

 #11 Find out that you way too short on fabric and can't even cover the arms, not to mention the ENTIRE BACK!

#12  Cut, sew, and patch  the barely extra fabric to be able to cover the the arms.

#13 Go to the store, buy 2 yrd of fabric that coordinate or anything that was cheap enough to cover the back.   Come home cut it in half and sew it so it can go further because you know that your upholstery job is not worth quailty .  Luckily enough the fabric just happened to be 50% off.  Spent $17 dollars on fabric.  Then had to buy glue and tacks to help the 1700 staples hold down the extra thick  fabric, since we didn't take off the old fabric, we just put ours on top.

 #14 staple, pull out staples, staple, pull out lots of staples, staple, pull out even more staples.

 #15 Find an old mis-matched sheet and use it to cover the bottom.  Put on the feet again.

 #16 Admire that it was completed.  Re-admire that it was completed.  Admire that after two days you still had enough energy to clean up.   (Only because your mother had the energy and you just had to keep up.)

#17 Pretend that the small color/fabric contrast in the front, and all of the back is on purpose, and not because you didn't have enough fabric to finish it in the first place.

#17B Hope that the fabrics match enough that people will think, whoever did the couch had a really cool idea to use two tones colors for the fabric. 

#18  Hope that all the seams, tucks, glue, tacks, and the 1700 staples hold for longer than a week.  (Yes we did keep track of how many staples we used.)

 #19 Wish that your mom and dad were in the picture because this couch is completed because of them!  (I probably would have given up about half way through and chucked the couch.)  I love you guys!!!

#20 Hope that the bruise on the palm of your hand, from of pressing the staple gun 1700 times, will go away.

#21 Wonder what the heck you are doing with a light colored couch with three kids.  Then wonder why you didn't let your mother buy you that scotch guard. :)

#.