Reupholstering Old Furniture – What and Where to Buy Raw Material For Sofa?

It's 2010 and you have got bored of your old furniture and would like to reupholster the old furniture with new looks and designs. So let’s start over with reupholstering your outdated sofa. In this article, you will learn what raw material is required for reupholstering a sofa and where to buy raw material for your sofa.  In order to reupholster sofa, first of all you need an estimate that what will be the cost of reupholstering sofa and whether it comes in your budget? If you want to reupholster a very old sofa, the cost of reupholstering will be much more than reupholstering a not so old sofa because in old sofas, all the material would have been become useless due to constant wear and tear and for sofa older than 8 to 10 years or more, it is highly advisable to only keep their base and reupholster them totally. For sofas such like mine which was less than 5 years old, you do not need to spend so much money and actually you will save approximately 50% if you will reupholster a sofa of that age. Now let me tell you what is the material required for reupholstering sofa and where to buy the sofa upholstering material from.

Material required for reupholstering a sofa:

1. Sofa fabric or cloth: For a seven seater sofa, 20 meters and for a five seater sofa, 17 meters.
2. Jute canvas: 9 meter that will be enough for both.
3. Fancy ribbons or doris – 25 meter
4. Hardware Nails 2 No.- 500 gm.
5. Nails without head – 100 gm.
6. 2 inch nails – 250 gm.
7. Fevicol foamfix – Perfect adhesive for foam or if it is not available in your area than you can buy any other foamfix adhesive.
8. 7 sheets of cardboard.
9. P.U. puf foams for sofas – 10 inch sheets.
10. Two pair of scissors.
11. Two hammers – One small - one big.
12. Other hardware tools.
13. One inch tape to measure fabric required to cut according to shape.

Where to buy raw material for reupholstering sofa?

As in my case:

1. I purchased sofa fabric for my seven seater sofa from Chandni Chowk Cloth Market in New Delhi, India. The sofa fabric there ranges from 165 INR per meter to 1000 INR per meter or more. I didn’t try for more expensive ones because it was out of my budget. So I bought 360 INR per meter of sofa cloth from that market and it was 20 meters, so the price comes to around 7200 INR or approximately 160 $US according to today’s market rate. If you are in US, here is a link to a site which has provided a lot of addresses and contact numbers of sofa reupholstering shops in USA.
2. I purchased other raw material like hardware nails, jute canvas, fancy ribbons and doris, foamfix, cardboard, and foam sheets from Dev Nagar, Karol Bagh, New Delhi. If you are in other part of world, you can search for local hardware stores on google in your area searching for terms like for example if you are in living in London, then you can search decorative home furnishings and supplies in London, Home Furnishing Merchant Wholesalers in London, Draperies and drapery fabrics in London, cotton Reupholstery Drapery in London, and upholstery stores in London, Broadwoven Fabric Mills in London, Reupholstery and Furniture Repair shops in London, Sewing, Needlework, and Piece Goods Stores in London.

So the approximate cost of reupholstering a seven seater sofa set comes to around 160 dollars for the cloth fabric + 200 dollars worth of hardware material and other raw material required for reupholstering a sofa as mentioned above which equates to 360 $US in India might be around 420 dollars in USA. Don’t you think this is cheap enough for reupholstering a sofa as if you will go ahead for buying a new sofa, the cost will be anywhere between 1000 $US to 2500 $US or more. Plus one more thing, the sofa you will get upholster on your own will be much more better, stable, and strong that a new sofa set available in the market because sofa manufacturers use cheap quality raw material when making sofas.

So this article was just about what and where to buy raw material for your sofa and in my next hub, I will provide step by step instructions on how to reupholster a sofa.