How to Recover a Settee Sofa

Have you ever thought about how to recover a settee sofa? About 15 years ago my daughter, Madeline and I did! We took this lovely old settee and completely reupholstered it. This sofa settee was given to my daughter for free from some family that was moving. It was in great condition but obviously needed to be recovered.

We didn’t know what we were doing!

Neither of us had ever reupholstered anything of this magnitude before. In the past i have made slipcovers for chairs but never had I taken apart an entire sofa before and put it back together again!

My sister Tiffany had reupholstered a couple of chairs...HERE and HERE and she told us we could totally do this!

So began our project of removing all the fabric.

Removing all the old fabric

Madeline, her sweet husband Peter, my other daughter Emily, even my little granddaughter and I all worked like dogs pulling out thousands of staples! Yanking off all the fabric and taking the entire settee apart.

Tip- Save all the pieces of fabric and label them so you can use them as a pattern for the new fabric.

Starting the reupholstery of the sofa settee

Once we took it all apart the sofa we painted all the wood sections pure white. We washed the new black denim fabric to make it more pliable and easy to work with.

Next we began the reupholstering process by using the old fabric as a pattern and cutting the new black denim fabric to match the old.

Then with a staple gun we began stapling the new fabric on the sofa. We stapled and stapled and stapled. We just followed the shape of the arms, the back, the seat and you could tell where to staple because of all the areas where we removed the old staples.

Reupholstering in style

We did this project in fashion style. Check out the outfits we were wearing while reupholstering. See my cheetah scarf and those shoes!!

The shoes were Madeline’s of course, I can’t really wear heels like that.

At one point we couldn’t see where to staple in a few sections so Madeline strapped on her head light! But notice her gorgeous drop earrings and her beautiful draped green top!

Style all the way! haha

To finish off areas where the pieces came together, we used black and white polka dotted fabric and cording. We sandwiched the cording in the fabric and sewed it up in long strips.

Then we hot glued it all in place.

The finished settee sofa recovered

It really turned out amazing and we were so happy with it.

The details on this sofa are so pretty.

Me and my sweet little grandkids (who by the way who are now 14 and 15!) sitting on the sofa.

And yes we did all of this with two little kids in tow in a little apartment…even the painting!!

Yes we are crazy! 🙂

It was so much work but also so much fun to work together on a big project like this with my daughter.

Giving the sofa Settee to me

Madeline moved into a home where she did not have room for this cute sofa. So now it is in my master bedroom and I love it. I think I need to make some new pillows to go on the sofa and maybe a rug 🙂