Customer Reviews

Simply Upholstery: Step-by-Step, Renewing Your Favorite Furniture

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book won't leave you wondering if you have all of the information. This book is an excellent book for beginners. It explains everything from what tools you will need to tips from the pros. You dont need another book when you buy this one. Great Find for my first upholstery book.

This book is not, and does not claim to be, the last word on all aspects of upholstery. But it is loaded with most of the basic information and step-by-step instructions that a home do-it-yourselfer would need. It is lavishly illustrated with numerous clear full-color illustrations and photos. I found it extremely helpful; excellent for the do-it-yourselfer as well as for the more serious student of upholstery who's looking for a place to start. (Its only shortcoming was not listing any sources for buying supplies.)

An avid do-it-yourselfer that loves to work on decorating projects around the house writes this review. I purchased this book after I finished my first upholstery project. About 3 years ago I got a bug to try my hand at upholstery and prompted stripped a loveseat down to its frame. I used only a few short guides from the Internet as my directions. Surprisingly it worked, but it was not the easiest way to learn to reupholster something. I purchased this book when I decided to reupholster a wing chair. This book has been invaluable.

The book is subdivided as follows:

PART ONE: Be Creative
Thinking Creatively
Upholstery Design
Choosing Fabric
Choosing Trim
Into the Workroom

PART TWO: Techniques
Analyzing Your Furniture
Tools and Terms
The Parts of the Cover
The Fabric Treatment
Measuring and Estimating
Stripping the Old Fabric
Repairing the Innards
Cutting the New Cover
Basic Construction Techniques
Putting on the Cover

PART THREE: The Process
Watching the Process Unfold

The book covers all the tools that you will need to get started. They also tell you how to replace the webbing and reattach the springs. They do a nice job of showing you how to determine yardage for the piece you are going to recover.

The book spends a lot of time on the recovering of a wing chair. Since I started with a loveseat and moved to a wingchair. In my experience the wing chair is much more difficult because it has more pieces and those pieces are curved. I feel that once you can recover a wingchair everything else is a piece of cake. My next project is an antique loveseat that needs to have its underlying structure reinforced. After reading this book twice, I feel comfortable that I can handle the task.

For those of you that are new to upholstery I will warn you about a couple of things:
1. It takes much longer than you anticipate.
2. The people that originally construct furniture seem to get paid by the staple, I know I pulled at least 1000 out of the first piece I reupholstered
3. Make certain the frame is sturdy before you consider recovering a piece of furniture
4. Consider a solid fabric for your first project so that you don't have to match any patterns
5. Save and tag the pieces as you remove them to use as a pattern
6. Pick up a few basic tools before you start: a tack puller, a web stretcher and a pneumatic nail gun.

If you have patience and time, you will enjoy the process.

I found this book did not take you through the steps in a logical way. Rather the various stages were grouped for the various chairs and I found it difficult to follow each stage for my particular chair (a French Provincial or Louis XV). If however, you have a Wingback or Queen Anne chair to cover, this was given a great deal of consecutive coverage! I am doing a course at the moment in French and being not a good french speaker am keen to find a good reference book for understanding the positioning of springs for example (which we are doing in the lessons) and how to sew them in; but was informed in this book that this was too difficult and it was not covered. Certain points were done well but on the whole I found the small print and the sequencing of the information, confusing and a bit frustrating.

This book is very basic and exactly as the title suggests -- simple. If you are looking for information as a do-it-yourselfer, this is not the book. You would be better off with UPHOLSTERY -- A Complete Course by David James.

Written in easy to understand terms with lots of illustrations. This is a great book that explains how to reupholster several types of furniture pieces while teaching you the pro's tricks, so you get up to speed quickly!

This is a great book! It takes you through the process of reupholstery with a step-by-step explanation of tools, terminology and process. Then it provides great pictures of each step. It would appeal to a technical or visual learning style.

this book is excellent for people who already have a knowledge of upholstry, but I did not think it was the best choice for a beginner. It basically shows a step by step upholstry project (a wing back chair), that I thought was too hard for a beginner. However, for people with some upholstry projects behind them, I thought this book was great--it tackled a difficult project and used just about all the techniques you could ever want in an upholstry project.

This book was clear and concise in it's instructions for upholstering most anything. Good illustrattions and easy, step-by-step guide. It gave me the confidence to tackle a loveseat for my very first project. It turned out great. I highly recommend this book if you want to learn how to upholster furniture.

Even though I have not begun my upholstery project,
this book will be of great help to me. I recommend
it to anyone who is a bginner. Sandra R.