16 April 2014

Life Lessons Learned: Upholstered Furniture

 

When you furnish your first home(s), buy the best upholstered furniture you can afford. Even a bit better, if you're daring.

These chairs and ottomans used to be the same, except for radically different upholstery. One chair and ottoman resided in our previous familyroom, and the daring upholstry had been influenced by a half dozen trips to Santa Fe in the late '90s and early 2000s. The other set we purposely bought for this greatroom when we moved in, and it was a red-floral-fruit chintz. Our 2 three-seater couches transitioned from the old familyroom and we purchased a two-seater for our library here--all the same style-brand. I believe they were Flexsteel, a middle-of-the-road priced brand but unbelievably durable.

 

They all look quite different now, but originally staying with the same style allowed us to move them between rooms, and finally to reupholster and re-style the pieces when we redecorated 2+ years ago.

I love that the two ottomans fit nicely between the legs of this Pottery Barn console table. Actually, they were each 35" wide but we had the upholsterer cut them down to 33" to fit. My brilliant idea!

This Chippendale-style sofa is Ethan Allen (my vision of "the best" almost 30 years ago). It used to be cream with a country-blue cross-stitch every so often. Now it resides in our loft (guest space). The bright insets on the pillows were made from a fabric sample.

There are two of these wing-back chairs in our morning room. They used tho be cream and country-blue checked and with the above sofa sat proudly in our former livingroom. One was reupholtered to a horrendous purple linen for a brief and ill-conceived moment.

That Bombay Trading Company table came from an estate sale ($75) and will soon be painted.

So, upholstered furniture can live almost forever. If you find something pleasing and most of all comfortable, buy it, use it, store it, reupholster it. We stored some of this for almost 10 years before repurposing. And, two sofas traveled to Colorado when our son's family returned from living in Europe.

 

1 comment:

Jeanne Henriques said...

Love your colour choices Marielle...we live in the warm mustard, red's and greens as well. We also have more upholstered furniture than I know what to do with. Some of it came from my huband's grandmother home and he can not fathom the idea of parting with it. Our solution involved two containers..one heading to Boston and the other Saigon. We were lucky on that front! Once our house in New Hampshire is done, I will merge more furniture from Vietnam with New Hampshire..life will get very interesting then! Sending you warm wishes from Saigon...xx