Budget to refurbish/recover a sofa?

[gizmo]

So, I'm idly flicking around ebay (as you do) and there's a few (potentially) very pretty chesterfields on the market. Most of them need at least recovering, and that would be beyond my limited upholstering skills.

Has anyone done this? Roughly how much should I be setting aside for recovering a 6' sofa? I get the impression a chesterfield is a pretty complex project.

Maybe this is 'how long is a piece of string' situation. I'd probably want a plain upholstery fabric - thinking less than £25 pm might give me a choice without being eye watering on the price. But how much would I need? And how much is a pro upholsterers' time?

i had a quote of 200 for armchair, plus 7 metres of fabric, so nearly 400 quid. when i asked him to quote for the sofa, he said un less it was very good quality frame, it wasnt worth recovering - ie most of the standard high street ones. also if it needs recovering it probably needs some restuffing too which is added cost.

worth it if labour is free (ie your own) prob not if you have to pay someone.

Oh, thanks HerHonesty, missed this message last night. So the lesson is make sure you've got a good quality frame then? The things I'm looking at are generally Victorian with pretty hefty frames but just how good is impossible to tell from the photo.

One of them, at least, has been completely refurbished 10 years ago and it looks as if it's only the fabric that needs changing. But of course I might be fooling myself here.

It's a different project, but a local upholstery company charged us £800ish to re-cover (loose covers) our Habitat sofa and 2 Ercol armchairs this year. The cost worked out about half on the fabric and half on the labour. That included new cushions (foam), but was obviously a far simpler job than refurbishing a frame. Gives an idea of the cost of the work vs cost of fabric though.

We paid about £1000 per sofa including new seat cushions, but that was with fabric at about £40 or £50 per metre, my recollection is that about 13m of plain fabric was required per sofa.

Oh brilliant: thank you Gypsy May and OmniDriod.

OmniDroid, loose covers may be a good solution, now I think of it: there's no way I'll ever keep it free of sinister stains otherwise.

Where did you get your upholstery fabrics from? I was looking in John Lewis yesterday and some of their stuff is OK, but not desperately inspiring.

when a dog I was looking after ripped open a customer's Chesterfield it was £££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££ to repair

Eeek!

Was it looking for spare change, Mitchy?

hahaha - maybe! I didn't shut a door properly and when I got back I was ankle deep in stuffing

argh, am traumatised just remembering it

runs away

Could have been worse: he could have swallowed a spring. Then you'd have had to add vets bill and emotional trauma to the whole episode.

Ray of sunshine, ain't I?