Restoring my Royalchrome loveseat pt 1

Hello lovely people. I hope your weekend was a good one. Even though it rained all day yesterday, it was a great weekend for me. I went on a walking tour with some lovely friends and had good conversation and good food. I even made some pants, two pairs to be exact, but more on all of that later this week.



Next month is sort of a series of deadlines for me. Arbitrary for sure, but I feel it's a good place to set some goals. I'm going to be hosting my first ever housewarming at the end of April, and I've already sent 'save the date' notifications to people! Squeeee! An invitation will be made and sent out by the end of next week.

With this time coming close, and a menu to plan (don't get me started), I've decided it's a good time to get some long standing projects out of the way before I let a lot of people look around my house. One one of those projects is my couch.

Mommie misses you, pubby kisses!

I bought this wire framed couch about ten years ago on eBay for $250. It was shipped broken down, and the screws to put it together, though the seller said they were there, were not. Me knowing nothing about this stuff went to the hardware store and got stuff that I *thought* would work. It's been in a state of 'use' from then on. With use, I mean as a sort of bed for my now deceased pooch, Georgia.

Note her doggie bed in the background on the floor.

The short time I had Taylor, even he got in on the couch action.

A 100 pound dog sleeping on it for 6 years, and my ass on it from time to time was not the most stress free use for this vintage piece. It has not held up over those years too well, or rather I have not been taking care of it as I should. I thought now was the time to remedy that.

Looking up the Royalchrome company on the Google machine, I found it's a company that started in the 30s. I was thinking my loveseat is more mid to late 50s, but then I found this ad from 1947.

From Paul.Malon's photostream.

From that I discovered there was a full size couch and side chairs in the same design! Holy crap! I've been looking for a chair for the living room, what better thing to do than to get a matching Royalchrome, right!?

That $250 price for the love seat I paid is long gone. I'm looking at nearly twice that for a chair now. The thing is, my budget for a chair was only $100 less than that, so I figure why not spend the extra cash on a collection piece? Also, I don't want people to come over and see my nasty couch, so I figured it was time to do something about it.

I had my fixing friend come over and access the frame. Turns out it's not in as bad a shape as I thought. With some new proper sized screws, and replacing the beams in the seat frame (something he's looking into) it seems the frame will be ship shape in no time.

For me, the challenge was the cushions. Over the years as my sewing and sizing skills were improving, I had made various covers for the original cushions with varying success. I was not sure how old the upholstery job was, but as most know, cushions have a pretty short life. I was not opposed to replacing the inner cushion, but I didn't want to give up the amazing fabric.

It's canvas, that I know and I feel bad seeing as how I didn't take care of it. To know then what I know now... In any case, I felt the best thing to do was to take the upholstery off the uselels stuffing and kind of make it into a cover for the new stuffings I'll get.

Sill tons of Georgia on this couch :(

I was leery of cutting it off, but I just went for it, cutting the back in an L shape. I slid off the cover and revealed the darcron covering. I peeled a bit back and saw that the innards were cotton batting.

COTTON BATTING!! Who uses that for cushions anymore?! I realized these were older than I thought. Or rather, this confirmed my 50s dating.

Alas, it was time to let them go, so out they came. I'll trash them in a day or so. My next step will be to overlock the cut edges on the upholstery and then give them a nice long oxyclean soak. Oh boy, is that overdue.

I've been looking online for replacement cushions and I found a local place where I can get backing and seating for about $120. Yay! I'll get to ordering and washing this weekend. And I'll keep you all abreast to my Royalchrome chair finds (there is one on etsy so don't buy it!). If you all know where I can get a chair like that cheaper (please, yes!) let me know.

I love new projects! So much fun. Okay, have a great Monday!