The Wilt Chamberlain Sofa...Refurbed...

 

A few months ago, I posted some photos of the living room suite that I was planning on using in my house.  If you'll remember, it was in pretty rough shape..

 

This is what all of it looked like when I first found it!  Covered in mildew, dust, and dirt.

Once I got it cleaned up and disinfected a few times, the naugahyde...most of it anyway...was in pretty decent shape.  There was a bit of cracking here and there though and what was left of the bottoms of the sofa and chair had to be completely ripped away as they were almost non existent!

 

The poor little ottoman was cracked....

I dropped the chair and the flying saucer ottoman off first, as the sofa...at nine feet long...was going to take up a heck of a lot of room at the upholsterer's shop!  When the fabric finally came in, they got to work right away on the chair.  It was done in one day!

 They had to remove the naugahyde from the back cushion because of cracking.  They fixed the seat and made a new cushion.  The hole in the front was taken care of by replacing the naugahyde on the front with the fabric.  There was some cracking on the arms as well (the upholsterer said that the backs and the arms are always the first to start cracking and hardening because of oils left by people and their hands coming into constant contact.  That bit couldn't be replaced as it would likely have ruined the inside and outside arms.  My mom had a moment of inspiration and asked if we could put strips on the arms to cover up the cracking.  I think that's my favourite part...well, that and the contrasting buttons!

Will ya look at that profile!

The ottoman had to be completely redone as the naugahyde was so dry, it would have cracked again if we'd just removed the cracked panels and replaced them with fabric.

That's the original button though!


The sofa was in worse shape than expected and had to have the bottom slats as well as the bottom pieces of frame remade because the original had warped.
We did the same strips on the arms so as to match the chair, even though the naugahyde was in great shape.

 In retrospect, I wish we had done contrasting buttons here too.  But, as I'm going to be placing a long line of throw pillows on it soon, they wouldn't be seen anyway.

I truly love it!  And it sits like a dream!  The only problem I've found is that it's so long that, if you want to lay down and watch telly, you can't prop your head on the end because it puts you so far away that you can't see the very well!  Instead, I have to pile pillows almost in the middle to put my head on!  Oh well, it's worth it to have my grandparents' 1960's living room brought back to life!

XX