This was my couch. I know it wasn't the best idea to buy an off-white sofa for the main room in the house, but it was the exact size I wanted and for the price I couldn't pass it up. I actually got two sofas from a local online auction, and they were a steal!
It wasn't long before the combination of my human and canine children had it looking pretty dingy, but I wasn't ready to give up on it. I started researching. At first I wanted to slipcover it, but I quickly realized that the only cover was going to have to be custom made and that would cost a fortune. Next I thought, "I could make a slipcover..." and then I came back down to Earth. I do have a sewing machine which I use from time to time, but this was a bit out of my abilities.
 |
| Before and After- Spray painted pillow |
Too bad this couch isn't brown or something that wouldn't show stains and spots so easily. In comes google. I began googling everything I could think of to change the color of a couch. I came across fabric spray paint. Yep, you can spray paint fabric. Although after my test I don't recommend it. I'm sure this is great for some applications, but it just wasn't for me. First It was really difficult to get even coverage. There is a lot of waste if you do it right, and this stuff wasn't cheap. It left the fabric slightly stiff and with the texture of these pillows this just wasn't working. I calculated that it would cost over $200 to spray the whole couch and I wasn't willing to spend that on something that might not work.
So I bit the bullet and decided to dye all the cushions. I used
RIT dye from the grocery store. I unzipped the seats and ripped the seams of the backs. I stuffed half of them in the washing machine and poured in the dye. This would have been much easier my old top loader and not my fancy high efficiency front loader. I ended up adding the dye mid cycle using the detergent dispenser. In hindsight I could have used the bleach part to automatically add it later. Despite the possibility of lingering brown dye appearing on my clothes I've had no problems.
I had to dye them in two batches and I was a little concerned the color would be different, but it actually came out pretty well.
I obviously couldn't dye the entire couch so I ended up with a two-tone look. I didn't mind it and the bottom and arms were still in pretty good shape anyway. I read about painting fabric which would give it a leather like finish, but decided to hold off on that until I got really desperate.
UPDATE: So this actually held up pretty well. I recently redyed it just to freshen it up since I had washed the covers and they started to fade. However the fabric on this couch isn't very tough. It was constantly getting little pulls all over. I finally broke down and went hunting for a couch cover. I ended up finding two sofa covers that were only $30 each! I did a lot of tucking and it doesn't look too bad. While it's not easy to get it on it stay in place well and is super easy to pull off when your toddler picks up your glass of wine and dumps it on the seat.
All in all, if you've got a tough fabric I'd say this is great route to revamp your couch on the cheap!
A little plastic wheelbarrow was the perfect container for the dirt and worms, of course served with a shovel. We found an assortment of bug candy to live in our dirt.
