Sometimes a situation arises when you need to make a backrest for a sofa with your own hands. The sofa can be decorated with backs and headboards of various types. These are stationary structures that are attached to the frame of the sofa, or backrests that are fixed to the wall or attached.
When assembling the backrest for the sofa, you need to pay attention to the tension of the upholstery so that folds and distortions do not form.
The following tools will be needed for work:
- electric jigsaw and a set of hacksaw blades;
- furniture stapler;
- hammer;
- drill or screwdriver, screwdriver;
- a hammer drill may be required for walls;
- sewing machine or sewing kit for handmade work.
The headboard for the bed is made from the following materials:
- Plywood with a thickness of 8-12 mm.
- Foam rubber with a thickness of 50 mm (it all depends on the desired result); instead of foam rubber, you can use other materials for padding. But they should not be deformed, as the structure may lose its appearance.
- Decorative fabric for the front side and durable technical fabric for the back. The cuts must be taken taking into account the total area of the back and allowances for fasteners.
- Colored threads, if there is a need to assemble folds, sew on rosettes, fabric flowers.
- For decoration you can use large and beautiful buttons, beads and stones without sharp edges.
- A set of hinges, screws, bolts for fastening the structure itself.
Benefits of homemade furniture
The obvious advantages of building home sofas include:
- Significantly lower financial investment. Most supplies can be found in your own pantry or garage.
- A large selection of ready-made plan projects and step-by-step instructions available for review. In addition, a huge collection of video tutorials on furniture making is freely available.
At each stage of independent work, the master has the opportunity to independently adjust the size, shape, external design and type of construction of the new sofa. In addition, there is a chance to check the reliability of fastenings, the quality of rotary fittings, the correctness of special processing and impregnation of surfaces.
Technology of work execution
This task is time-consuming, but completely doable. Reupholstering a sofa at home is not at all difficult if all steps must be performed carefully and in accordance with the recommendations and instructions.
At the first stage, the sofa is disassembled: the overhead elements, seat, and back are removed. The fasteners will be useful during assembly, so they are carefully assembled.
Next, the old upholstery is removed. This is done using an ordinary thin flat-head screwdriver. The covering cannot be thrown away, as new pieces of fabric will be cut out from its shape. After removing the coating, you need to check the condition of the internal structure and clean it.
Patterns are then made from the new material. They are very easy to make using removed old upholstery; you just need to add a few centimeters on each side for an allowance, the excess of which is then cut off. All fabric blanks for the pillows and for the sofa itself are made in a similar way.
It is better to purchase upholstery fabric with a small margin. Since if the dimensions and calculations are inaccurate, it may not be enough and in the worst case, it will not be possible to purchase more.
Depending on the purpose of the furniture, various materials are purchased. They can be made from a breathable natural but not hard-wearing fabric, ideal for sleeping, or they can be made from hard-wearing leather, suitable for long-term constant use, such as in organizations.
Buying fabric or leather is a very important undertaking, so before upholstering a sofa you should study photos of various design solutions, choose your individual style, choose the right fabric and store.
Selecting consumables
Before starting any independent work, you should decide on the shape and size, as well as choose consumables for making furniture. These can be a wide variety of devices:
- Wooden pallets. Garden sofas made from wooden pallets are widely popular among avid summer residents and lovers of summer outdoor recreation. Such models are sufficiently durable, easy to assemble (according to a pre-prepared diagram), and do not require special practical care. And the convenient shape and mobility of the pallet parts allows you to make an excellent corner sofa.
- Plywood sheets are another affordable material. It is durable and is a good basis for subsequent decorative processing.
- PVC pipes left over after a major renovation can also be used to make a durable furniture frame. This sofa is quite compact, does not have significant weight, and therefore can be installed on the balcony.
In practice, you can even find a homemade sofa made of cardboard. In most cases, all you need is the skill and skillful hands of the owner of the future sofa.
An equally important part of the work is the preparation of the soft part, and, accordingly, the choice of fabric base, filler, and cover. As a rule, there are two covers: an internal one for the filler, and an outer removable casing.
Fillers that hold the shape of the body are quite expensive, and therefore you can give preference to the most ordinary polyurethane foam, padding polyester, or holofiber.
For covers, it is better to use combined fabrics made from a mixture of natural and artificial fibers. They withstand frequent washing, are not afraid of detergents, and do not lose their appearance or color.
What you need to know before you start
First, keep in mind that even though sewing machines and other handy sewing accessories are available, it is important to understand that most of the work will have to be done by hand. Therefore, you need to be able to sew heavy fabrics and make patterns yourself
If you don't know how to do this, you'll have to learn.
However, there is a way to simplify the learning process - if you bought a cover for the sofa a long time ago, then you can tear it into separate parts and apply it to the existing fabric. However, often this is not possible. In this case, you will need to learn from video lessons on the Internet - fortunately there are a lot of them now.
You can make a cape with or without armrests. In the latter case, the process is much simpler, which will greatly help beginners. This option is well suited for country houses.
Sofa shapes
Linear option. The most common type of sofa. It is ideal for arranging a garden recreation area, a summer terrace, or a spacious balcony. However, such a model is completely inappropriate for small apartments, occupying a huge area.
A corner sofa is the most practical option for any apartments, recreation areas, loggias and garden gazebos. In independent work, too, as a rule, no special difficulties arise. Ready-made projects and video tutorials on You Tube channels will greatly facilitate the process of assembling furniture.We recommend reading:
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A compact round sofa is an original model, often equipped with built-in drawers for storing various small items, bed linen, toys, magazines, and newspapers. During the self-assembly process, special attention is paid not only to the frame, but also to the upholstery, filling, and external design.
Independent work on the construction of a sofa allows the master to show his creativity, making the most original shapes and models.
Book
A sofa book is considered a classic version of a furniture accessory. To transform it into a sleeping place, just lower the backrest. In the process of unfolding, it resembles the structure of a book.
This mechanism has some advantages. These include:
- quality parts;
- robust design;
- durability;
- spacious storage system.
The disadvantages of this structure include:
- constant movement of the sofa for transformation;
- rapid deformation of the sleeping area. Over time, the filler begins to deteriorate at the bend;
- narrow sleeping place. Only one person can fit here.
What materials may be needed
When working on your own to build a simple sofa, the following set of tools may be useful:
- Drawings and diagrams.
- Construction pencil, tape measure, level.
- Grinder and welding for working with metal surfaces.
- Planer, jigsaw, sandpaper for working with wooden surfaces.
You will need sets of fasteners: metal corners, screws, bolts, nails. You should also not forget about special impregnation, which means you will need an antiseptic, an antipyretic, a moisture-resistant composition and an anti-corrosion coating for metal parts.
Interior finishing
Cover them with foam rubber from the inside to make them more soft and elastic. Now that the base is ready, start plating. Carefully measure all parts of the product and cut the required amount of fabric. After this, make the upholstery and attach it to the sofa.
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In general, it will take about 3 days to make such a sofa. So, now you know how to make a sofa with your own hands. As you can see, this is quite simple and feasible for everyone.
Step-by-step assembly of a linear sofa
Photos of handmade sofas are a great help when working independently. Such photo reports allow you to evaluate each stage of assembly in more detail. Step-by-step instructions for the master:
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- According to the plan prepared in advance, parts for the sofa are prepared: frame posts, bottom and back. If the model includes drawers, additional compartments, and side sides, these components are also cut out of wood (or wooden pallets are prepared).
- Each part is carefully sanded with a plane and sandpaper, getting rid of gaps and sharp edges.
- All surfaces are thoroughly impregnated with special compounds, and the next stages of work are started only after the impregnating coatings have completely dried.
The assembly of the sofa is completed by organizing the fabric part and sewing removable covers, but this stage is not strictly necessary and may not be used at the discretion of the craftsman.
Damage, types of repair
Damage to upholstered furniture is most often caused by prolonged or careless use. The fabric worn to a shine on the seat, armrests, back will fit perfectly into loft, vintage, art-believe interiors, but will be out of place in classic, minimalism, modern and most others.
Upholstery material is damaged if it is not properly cared for, by children who spill drinks, who draw with felt-tip pens, as well as by pets who like to chew corners or sharpen their claws on the armrest. Fading, rubbing to holes, stains that cannot be removed, fabric tears also require replacement of all or part of the upholstery.
Dented surfaces worsen the appearance and reduce performance properties. In this case, it is necessary to replace foam rubber, padding polyester, and in some cases, spring blocks. Large dips at the bottom occur due to high loads - the springs simply pierce the bottom, they need to be removed by replacing the damaged bottom with plywood or fiberboard. It is permissible to completely remove the springs, replacing them with a thick layer of foam rubber, furniture silicone, and other fillers.
Violation of the integrity of the frame makes it impossible to use the sofa for its intended purpose. Defects requiring repair include weakening of tenon joints, breaking off of sidewalls, the appearance of visible gaps, and general loosening of the structure. If wooden parts are severely damaged by insects, fungus, or mold, they must be replaced. If transported incorrectly, it is also easy to break the sofa.
A separate category of damage is chips, cracks, and other problems in the places where the closing and opening mechanisms are attached. Most often this applies to “Eurobook” type models, wardrobe sofas, and kitchen structures with drawers. Often the frame is so damaged that most of the parts will have to be replaced, that is, completely disassemble the old sofa and assemble a new one.
Photo tips on how to make a sofa
Process description
Draw your sofa on paper and then break your design down into simple shapes.
Then transfer the design onto pattern paper. Be sure to leave some space between pieces. These will reduce the risk of you sewing something wrong, because excess pieces of fabric can be cut off.
After this, sew the parts together so that you have a finished one-piece case.
Thus, in order to make a simple sofa with your own hands, you do not need to be a furniture maker. Anyone can make such furniture.
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Furniture made of plywood. Is it good, bad or terrible? The furniture maker answers
With materials such as natural wood, chipboard and MDF, our population is relatively clear - wood is a natural material, and the other two are artificial. As for plywood, some consider it to be as artificial as the above-mentioned ones, although, of course, this is far from the case, or rather, not at all.
Chipboard. It most likely consists not of shavings (everyone has seen shavings from under a plane), but of sawdust. It is made by pressing these same sawdust, which are held together by a binder (a rare abomination containing that same formaldehyde)
MDF and fiberboard
Also slabs and also artificial. Only a slightly different type of raw material is pressed - wood fibers. Binders are also substances of little use, the degree of harmfulness of which is constantly discussed between manufacturers and consumers.
Plywood
But plywood, if you look at the essence, in terms of the integrity of the material, can be classified as conditionally artificial or conditionally natural materials. You just need to look at what it consists of and how it is made.
The main component of plywood is completely natural
material - natural wood veneer obtained by peeling, planing or sawing. These are sections of wood of various thicknesses. It is not subject to any processing.
For a long time, thinly sawn wood plates were called plywood, and the concept of veneer appeared later. The old masters called veneer plywood.
The thickness of the veneer for gluing is usually a little more than a millimeter. Hence the three-layer plywood has a thickness of 4 mm.
In fact, in the “disassembled” state, the plywood looks like this:
In this photo, however, sheets of oak veneer with a thickness of only 0.6 mm are laid, but the essence is conveyed correctly.
From this we can conclude that plywood is nothing more than a carpentry product in itself and attributing it to artificial materials such as chipboard or MDF is completely wrong.
Step-by-step instructions for making simple furniture items from plywood
It is recommended to start making plywood furniture with the simplest designs, gradually acquiring and improving the skill of working with this material.
Rocking chair
Making your own rocking chair will be an excellent option to try your hand at carpentry. And you shouldn’t be afraid that the furniture will have some flaws - imperfections can be hidden with the help of painting or decorative textiles.
Table 3. Making a rocking chair
Mini sofa made of chairs
Several chairs fastened together are a ready-made frame for a small sofa that can be placed in the kitchen or on the terrace. Of course, it needs some finishing and decoration, and here too you can give free rein to your imagination.
- The chairs can be turned with their seats towards each other, moved apart to the required distance and laid on the seats with boards or durable sheet material cut to width. You will get a banquette for a bedroom or hallway.
Sofa made from old chairs
- A standard-shaped mini-sofa will be made from two or three chairs fastened together at the sides. If they are different shapes or heights, this can be corrected by securing a hard seat across all the chairs at a horizontal level. Then you need to glue foam rubber onto it and sew a cover onto the resulting structure.
Converting chairs into a sofa
Mini sofa
The most important thing about the most important thing
Everyone knows that the frame of a sofa is the main structural element on which the durability and ease of use of the product depends.
Previously, only wood was used to produce the frame, and the quality of the future sofa could be determined by its grade and type. The developments of modern manufacturers have added more options, which has made it possible to expand the range and attract more buyers. Now in the “Frame Material” column you can see the following options: Let’s take a closer look at each of the listed materials.
