My Settee, Adventures in Refinishing & Reupholstering-COMPLETED!

So, I have been lax about posting the progress of my new settee...it's done!  Let me show you--

If you ever take on such an endeavor, my advice to you is to have plenty of patients, lots of staples, and take pictures of everything as you do it (or undo it, so you can remember how to do it again).

The first step, was to understand how the current upholstery was secured, and then removing it.

Starting from the bottom, to remove the white cambric. 

Paying attention to the corners and folds of the fabric.

As I can see from the fabric, the bottom side pieces will be the next to come off.

Next, removing the front bottom

Note the encased chord in this section...

Now we are down to the seat and the arms, so I noted the underarm section for later reassembly.

On to the seat...which is attached in the section by my hand above.

Down to the arms.

I had no idea how to make arms look like these, until I took them apart, staple by staple!

But first, a look at the underside attachment-

Now the rolled arm-piece by piece

 All off!!  Cat approves!

 Here you can see the repair that need to me made to the supports, both the lengthwise and two crosswise pieces were blown out.  Those were no big deal to replace.

 A greater challenge and pain in the rear was repairing the the right side arm.  The padding had to be carefully peeled back, the cardboard covering as well, and the struts moved back into place and secured with nails, and of course, everything put back.  But, while I was replacing the cardboard, I thought, these arms could use additional padding...hatch a plan...so I took some foam padding, made angle cuts for less noticeable start and stop points (did not want it to extend into the seat area or around the sides of the arms, mostly on top) and sized to fit the arm tops.  This I encased inside the old foam which was already pre-shaped, and stapled into place.

With all the necessary repairs made, it was time to cut new pieces, using the old ones as patterns and adding allowances were needed (arms, seat).

Once all the pieces were cut, it was time to begin re-assembling in reverse order.
Starting with the arms...

 If I am to be perfectly honest here, I'll have to admit that I first put one side on backwards, and then realized I hadn't planned the direction of my fabric very well, and took them both off, recut them, and started over.
Yep.  I did that.

Also, I had no idea how it "should" be done, but I made buttons with a kit from walmart, popping the sew through tab off the backs and inserting a nail before assembling, and then pounding (gently!) into the center of the rolled arms.  It worked!

I used my sewing machine to encase a cord for the front bottom piece, using the old one as a how-to.  It was fairly obvious, I'm glad to say.

I'm not going to bore you with the re-assembly steps, you've toughed it out through the deconstruction, so here are some pics of the finished product.

I added some decorative brads instead of the bent-nail contraption that was originally holding the lower sides in place.  I like this way much better, although I took a picture of the not-as-good side...the other one looks better.

Additional advice I can offer: mark your screw holes for the feet, otherwise you will be in rough shape with your finished product, and be poking around for them with a pin, trying to enlarge the holes with nails and such, and really wishing you had done it differently!

Overall, I love this piece, it was worth all of the effort, and the long wait to find it.  And I'm very happy that it is finished, in a respectable looking manner, i.e. all of the design is facing the same way-hahaha!

Thanks for reading, hope this can be helpful in some way for you!