We Interrupt This Living Room...

..which is still in progress, and of which I'll show you pictures as soon as I'm done with everything.

However, I do need to show you two things:

1. I Got A New Loveseat

This is the Ikea SONGESAND loveseat, in "Nolhagen dark gray."  It was delivered on Sunday, and lemme tellya, I'd never put a couch together before. There were only 3 pieces, and I did it wrong twice, LOL.

It's so cute and small and comfy!  I love it!

2. Fabric & Rug Inbound

I also have some fabric for a pillow cover and wall hanging on the way to my house, as well as a new rug from Target.  I'm so excited, and impatient, that I made an Olioboard: 

Basically what it will look like when finished.  

The Slowest Couch Update EVER

So, sometime around April or May of 2013, I nabbed a sofa off the side of the road, and, looking back over this blog, I realize I never actually TOLD you about it. Oops.  The short version:  it was free, one arm was moldy and gross and I spent about three weeks cleaning, bleaching, and fixing up the fabric on that arm, and it came out great. Stained, but still great.  The couch looks to be an old Ikea piece - I can't find anything like it in the catalogs for the past five years, so it's at least older than that.  It came with two seat cushions, and no back cushions - no cover, either, just the basic under fabric that Ikea furniture comes with.

Fast forward to...yesterday.  Tired of both sitting on the floppy, thin cushions this sofa came with, and of that damned Day Sofa from World Market (I never like anything I do with it, and every time I decide to fix it up I get bored with it before I'm even finished, anymore. It's in the garage now), I took the loooong seat cushion that I made for it in 2012 apart, and used them to build and bulk up the white sofa's seat cushions.

Creating a long cushion for the convertible Day Sofa. 

All four of these pieces were made by slicing a pair of very thick salvaged seat cushions in half horizontally.

For the white sofa, I sliced the two larger seat pieces in half horizontally again, angling them to make a wide wedge, to build up the white sofa's cushions all over, but with the thickest part at the back to help reduce the steeply pitched angle of the sofa seat (I couldn't get up!)

Trying out pieces and shaping. 

A pic of the dry-run, with the wedges, a bit of rolled-up batting at the front edge to soften the transition between pieces, and a thin layer of batting (later doubled) wrapped around the whole thing to smooth out the seams between pieces.

After I was sure of the result, I used spray-adhesive to stick all the parts together and smoothed out all the edges.

Then I used an old cotton sheet to make a cover for each cushion, to hold it all in place.

Yes, I fixed the wrinkliness of the one on the right. It was just on weird. 

Now THAT'S what I call seat cushions.  They're about 2" thicker than the old cushions, smooth, soft, and squishy.  They look a bit slapdash in the pic, here, but keep in mind, this whole sofa is meant to be used with a slipcover, and the seat cushions are the same way.  This thing is so comfy with the deeper, softer cushions, that when I lay on it to chill later in the evening, I fell asleep right away and woke up covered with cats.

The next step will be to create back cushions out of the remaining two pieces from the Day Sofa in the top picture. After I'm satisfied with those, I'll be on the hunt for some fabric to cover this entire piece of furniture.  I can't wait!  This thing has needed a lot of work, but I adore the shape of it, and I'm really excited about getting it covered.  :)


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Couch Slipcover: Epilogue

I recovered the couch in July/August 2010.  *checks watch*  It is now June of 2012 - almost exactly two years later - and the slipcover is in great shape, still comfy, nice and soft, and although there are a couple of spots where the cats have clawed at the fabric, it's not bad at all.  I'm still really pleased with how it's holding up.

Except for one thing.  It's fading

1. really fast
2. unevenly - as in, the whole couch looks like it was made with four different brown fabrics.   Which is what happens when you use curtain panels to upholster your furniture:  they didn't all come out of the same dye batch, so they're aging differently.  Which I knew, but...well, they were cheap.  I needed cheap. 

Options: 

• throw a gigantic soft throw of some kind over the whole thing.  If I can find one large enough to look right, that is not just a bedsheet.  Which I can't. 
• remove the entire cover, wash it, and attempt to dye it. 
• remove it, take it apart, and use the pieces as a pattern to make a new cover...yup, completely replace the cover after only 2 years.   

I'm tempted to be mad that the thing is getting weird after two years - but I kind of intended it to last for a couple-three years, just until I could figure out and make a nicer cover for it.  I used what I had, intending to replace it.  And it's getting to be time.  What to do, though? 

1.  I've always wanted a blue velvet couch
2. have you ever tried to scrape cat hair off velvet?

funky-comfy drop cover, or soft linen?
But, the whole reason I slipcovered the thing
was so I didn't have to drape blankets over it! 

pattern-y? 

slightly more monochrome pattern-y?

or, since it's mostly the cushion fabric that's faded,
not the main body of the couch, I could do a co-
ordinating fabric on the cushions only, for the time
being.  I've done it before, and it was neat.  But..

Hm.

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Folding Sofa, Lightly Used, Needs New Cushions

You know what else I want in the living room?  This:

This is World Market's "Studio Day Sofa" (actually a photo of the slipcover they sell for it in "Mallard", which I guess is a color now, and not a duck.  Looks teal to me).

I have one, actually - or rather, I have the frame.  Long ago, back when I was newly divorced and possessed of a house with no furniture in it, I picked one of these up as a floor-model markdown for cheap.  While it was fantastic for one person to sit on, it didn't make even adequate main seating.  More than one person could sit on it if it was folded out (both arms lay down flat), but if one person got up, the other person was dumped onto the floor as the whole thing seesaw'd up into the air on the vacant end, since the feet are so close to the middle when folded out.  Whoops.

That said, I think it would make a fantastic auxiliary piece for extra seating, or for an out-of-the-way little reading nook type of thing.  It would be a great replacement for that dumb little Ikea mini-couch thing I picked up for free intending to spruce up but never did.  It's smallish (62"x33"), low enough to feel divan-esque (only 25" high at the back), and awesomely versatile.

The problem is that the cushion that came with this thing was thin enough that I could feel the wooden frame through it. I replaced it with a thicker, firmer cushion that I made from an old couch cushion, but when I retired the sofa to the garage for storage, I got rid of the cushion I'd made (one of my dogs had been sleeping on it while I was at work, and it was, erm, a bit funky).

Once I've got a new seat cushion for it (Ikea has a thin mattress I think I can work with, for only about sixty dollars), and some nifty throw pillows, I plan to put this thing into action again in place of the mini-couch.

Also World Market.  Also in "Mallard."  I have several of
these in different colors, including this one.  Looks teal to me.  

right?  

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Another Lost Post! (Couch Feet)

WTF, blogger?   Here's one I thought I posted last week, which I just realized never made it through.

LOOK, COUCH FEET: 

Sasha approves of this couch.

 From the coffee table I rescued from the roadside on bulk trash day last month.  I harvested the feet and the piano hinge that once held a folding top, and gave the rest to a friend who plans to make it into a shelf-y entertainment center type of thing.

Before:

short, plastic Ikea feet

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Table Out of Nowhere

Of the things on my to-do list for last weekend, the only thing I got done was the couch cover. But it's done!

Yesterday was bulky trash pickup day in my neighborhood.  Whee!  I was pleased to see my pile thoroughly looted after having only been out for three hours - there was practically nothing left for the trash collectors.

And I scored this coffee table:

Two points each to those of you who looked at this and wondered why the heck I'd be interested in it.
Look at the feet, though:

PERFECT!  These are exactly what I've been looking for...for my couch.  :)

They're undergoing a slight color modification at the moment; another couple of coats of stain and some clearcoat, and then pads on the bottom so they don't scratch my floor, and they'll be ready to go onto the couch.

Yay, couch feet!  The rest of the table is probably going to be turned into a small bookshelf for a friend of mine.  :)


And I swear I'll get that bathroom painted this week. Really, I will.



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