Corner Settee

When I was a tyke I didn’t care about the proper name for our corner settee. I just wanted to sit in the thing and watch telly. Now that I’m a grown man, I still don’t care and I still just want to relax in front of the telly. It is truly amazing how things change over the years. The wife had other plans though, and I’m wondering if I would have been happier being alone and miserable. Still, here we are and buying some new furniture for the home as it were. I don’t like to go at anything half-arsed so I decided to use my laptop for something other than a drink coaster and learn a thing or two about sofas.

So the first thing I learn is that a two seater is called a love seat. I suppose I can understand that, as I don’t particularly like sitting on a small-ish one with another bloke if alternative seating options are available in the room. I also discovered that a corner settee is called a “sectional”. Maybe in the states it is, not in my neighborhood. That should have been enough to get me going, but to my horror I was swept into a world of unnecessary naming conventions for cushioned seats.

I’m pretty sure I’d heard of a chaise lounge before, but didn’t know it was a long couch with a single armrest on one side. The others I had never heard of. A divan, is basically just a couch with no sides. Yea, apparently in the middle east they used to throw a mattress against the wall and say, “Hey mate, that’s a couch” and at some point someone else said, “No, what you have there is a Divan”. Brilliant. Later, someone put legs on the thing, lucky thing that they didn’t make up another name to help clear up any confusion about the legged vs. legless varieties.

Then there was the “fainting couch”. This is the one you’ll see in some old, wealthy homes. It has the back raised on one side and looks quite fancy. And today you can have that couch available near your window in your conservatory, so someone doesn’t pull down window coverings like some type of ez fit blinds for conservatories.  Apparently this was popular when women wore corsets because they’d have the things done so tight they would get to the top of the staircase and literally feel like they were about to faint. Who knew sofa history could be so disturbing? At this point I wasn’t terribly keen to discover what “chesterfield” was, so I gave up. There’s really no point in these others anyhow, all you really need is a big, comfy corner settee and whatever will fill the rest of the space, right?

The time may have come that you’ll need to reupholster your leather settee. Yes your favorite corner settee has been used lovingly time and time again, but alas your use has gotten to the leather. You’ve been putting it off for far too long, but you can hardly sit on it anymore.  So let’s get started with the reupholstering process.

Stripped Settee

First, you’ll need to turn over the settee so you can begin removing the leather. Of course if it’s a larger corner settee you’ll have to separate the pieces and reupholster them individually. It will be more of an undertaking because of the larger size as well. Take a flat screwdriver to remove the staples. If there is any kind of stuffing or batting underneath where the leather was, take a look to see if it needs replacement. If it does then this will have to be replaced as well. Now that you’ve take off the leather outer, and either left or replaced the batting, it’s time to ad your new leather. Take the old leather covering and find it to the new leather. The old leather covering is your template for the new one, so that you can cut out the right form and shape. Make sure you have a good sharp pair of scissors for this, to cut cleanly.

Now that you’ve cut your pattern exactly as the old one, take out all of the pins. Now take the rear portion and staple it on the top of the settee if a leather back, or on the back underside of the seat, if just the seat is leather and the back is wood. Turn over the settee and staple the leather all along the bottom. Now flip it back over to upright and hang the leather on the front, flip it again and staple on the bottom. If your settee has arms, cover them with the new leather and staple them on the inner and outer portions of the arms. Also tuck under the front of the arms and staple under there as well. You have now re-upholstered your settee. If your settee is very large like a corner settee, it can be done by you though it will require more care and work, you may want to seek a professional reupholstering service for it. Hopefully this article was useful in tell you how to properly reupholster your settee.