Personal Experience: How to Cover a Sofa by Yourself

We already told about the wonderful Khrushchyovka that Ekaterina decorated with her husband by herself. One of the most memorable rooms was the living room: it features a luxurious accent sofa that our heroine covered all by herself! If you care about being respectful to natural resources and your finances, this article will be very useful.

Ekaterina, a blogger @rukodelnitsa_v_dome, weighs only 47 kg but covered the sofa herself

I suggest spending a few thousand rubles and a week on DIY sofa covering.

Removing the old fabric

First, remove the old fabric, filming or photographing complex parts of the details at the same time, because the idea that you just remember everything won't work. When assembling, you'll definitely have questions like: 'Where do I attach this part?' And then you'll think of me kindly.

Layout and label the parts

Next, lay out the parts on the floor in a rational way: start with the widest and longest ones, then move to narrow and short pieces. Mark the fabric width as 140–150 cm. Measure first, then buy. I used exactly 8 meters of fabric with a width of 150 cm.

Tip: Do not choose fabric with a pattern, pile, or plaid. You must consider the direction of the print, which increases fabric consumption and the chance of making a mistake. When cutting, always label the parts and baste them immediately — otherwise you’ll end up looking at a stack of pieces and not knowing where to begin. You may also need felt and foam.

Sewing and covering the parts

Sew the parts with reinforced thread (35 LL) and preferably topstitch. Then, working in four hands (one person stretches the fabric, another staples it with a furniture stapler), cover the parts. The tension should be tight and staples frequent, every 2–3 cm.

If you don't have a helper — no problem, it’s possible to do it alone, as I did. If you don’t have leftover parts at this stage, congratulations, you’re on the right track, but don’t relax yet. The sofa assembly is still ahead.

Assembling the sofa

You should have about half a box of different screws and self-tapping screws: you don’t need to know their names. The main thing is not to lose them and not have any extras — otherwise, your sofa might collapse at the worst possible moment.

Assemble the sofa by referring to a cheat sheet on your phone (remember the photos?). When your sofa is safely standing by the wall, don’t jump on it with joy like in childhood! Remember that you no longer weigh 20 kg, and the sofa isn’t as young as it seems.

I covered the sofa from start to finish by myself for the first time in my life. And you can do it too! Especially if you stroll through furniture stores for educational purposes and count the zeros on price tags.