I built a couch, and here are the details

Hi there!

I believe that having a custom piece of furniture that you love, and having it without breaking the bank, is entirely possible.

You just have to be resourceful / thrifty / patient (if you’re waiting for Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace to deliver the goods) / creative / flexible / all of the aforementioned. If you’re willing to do that, you’ll be cheering and your home will be filled with interesting things.

Recently, I built a couch. It is the first couch I have ever built, and I can honestly say it was a very straight-forward and relatively simple project. Woodworking is not entirely new to me and I have been sewing for a long time, but I sincerely think that anyone who knows how to bang timber together and use a basic sewing machine will be able to make this.

Unfortunately I didn’t record my building process in any way as it was a little experimental, but what I can do is share some tips and what I remember of the journey from drafting to sitting on this couch.

First, some pics. Because they’re half the reason I enjoy posting these sorts of things, TBH.

And of course, a little backstory:

When we moved in to our current house we only had one couch - albeit a behemoth of a thing. It’s a ‘3 seater’, but really it can seat 4 people comfortably, and 5 people semi-comfortably. It’s great. A moderately tall man can lie down on it without head or feet touching the arms. I love this couch (it’s the Jazz 3 Seater Sofa from Fantastic Furniture and we got ours in the colour ‘Standard Teetex Denim’).

As great as our blue couch is, we bought it before we had babies… so we didn’t know that our toddler would love touching the couch with grubby hands and making it dirty. Thankfully she only did this when we were sitting (and eating) on it, but nevertheless it was getting grubby pretty quickly. So I decided that we needed a second couch that we could sit on and eat (because that was my solution - not ‘cover it with a blanket’ or ‘don’t eat on the couch’). Basically I wanted a couch that would be baby proof / easy to clean.

I don’t buy leather (the most obvious easy-to-clean choice) but I like the leather look, so I was keeping my eye out for vinyl. Tan vinyl. A very specific shade of tan vinyl. This kind of shade:

Swoon.

Many hours of web-surfing (that’s still an expression people use, right?) later, I discovered that the kind of couch I had in mind was going to cost $$$$ that we didn’t have, and I didn’t want to settle for something that I wouldn’t love. So I decided to make one!

Finding the exact shade of tan vinyl fabric that I wanted was also incredibly difficult. I didn’t want to blow my budget; I set myself a $300 limit for the whole couch but I wanted to be as far away from that figure as possible. Then one day, while browsing online fabric sales, I found THE PERFECT shade of tan faux leather on sale for $11 a metre. I immediately bought 11 (yes, 11) metres and went to bed feeling excited.

The next day I received an email notifying me that the faux leather was not available in my requested meterage and I had been refunded! Is there anything worse?! (many things.)

You know what, this is just a story of disappointment and probably not super interesting to read about, so let’s skip ahead. To cut a long story short, I ended up buying a shade of brown that was the closest thing I could find to my initial tan dream. I think it ended up being a good choice, because the contrast of the fabric with the exposed cypress arm wouldn’t have been as dramatic had I ended up with the shade of tan I wanted. And I feel like this brown is perhaps more timeless.

Here are the details that you may be interested in:

Project cost: Approximately $270, not including materials I already had on hand. Time taken: 2 months, but only because I built it very slowly (I have a family and other commitments to tend to, after all). Someone with more time could easily build something like this in an afternoon.

• The couch is a 2 seater, about 1.5m wide and 800mm deep. It is constructed from multiple timber box frames fortified with slats and screwed together. I made sure the base was extra sturdy to take as much weight as possible. The timber is simple 64mm x 19mm pine planks from Bunnings, with the exception of the exposed arm which is made from cypress fence pickets (also sourced from Bunnings). I had a lot of this already so I didn’t have to buy it.
  

• I bought the brown vinyl on sale at Spotlight for $15/m and used approximately 10m (around $150 all up). It has a really lovely texture up close, which sold me when I saw it. Once the timber frame was constructed I used a staple gun to attach the vinyl to the frame before screwing it all together. The cushions have simple box cushion covers - if you don’t know how to sew these, there are loads of tutorials on the internet. Any time you sew vinyl, please use a leather needle in your machine. A regular needle is not going to cut it for heavy weight fabrics.
  

• I got these foam cushion inserts online - two premium grade high density (for the seat cushions) and two medium density (for the back cushions). I covered the foam inserts with a bit of batting which I also already had on hand. All up that was $118.60. I would rather have salvaged some old couch cushions from Gumtree or the like, but I couldn’t find any at the time that were the right size and in good enough condition.
  

• The legs are 140mm tall and I bought them online a little while ago (I can’t remember where from Forfar how much though - sorry! I’ll take better note next time). These are slightly taller than your average couch legs - initially I had shorter ones, but the seat was too low to the ground (which was great fun for my daughter, but less great for adults). I liked the couch low and didn’t think I would like it as much raised, but now I think that the taller legs add a certain elegance to what might otherwise have looked quite chunky / boxy… what do you think?
  

All together I came in happily under budget this time and this process was definitely cheaper and more rewarding than buying something new or used. The design isn’t really something you see every day and the solid arms are really practical for holding plates / cups / books.

We still default to the blue couch for comfort (a plush fabric is always going to be more comfy than leather or vinyl, let’s be real) but this one is by no means uncomfortable. It’s a little too short to lie down on but that’s not what we use it for anyway. It is DEFINITELY easy to clean and adds some nice character to the room. The exposed timber is especially beautiful.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and that you’re feeling inspired to go and do something great today. Always keep in mind that you are capable of a lot more than you think if you just give things a try - and don’t give up even if you fail the first time or first few times. You’ve got this! Go make a couch, or something else, and tell me about it because I want to see all of your amazing efforts!

…See ya!

love, Jenna