Replacement Covers and Cushions for Furniture Made by Comfy 1/Creative Comfort

The normal procedure: The customer chooses a fabric, either from among fabrics they have seen in our showroom or in web sites of fabric suppliers, from swatches mailed out by us, or from a local store. In almost every case for furniture sold from 1978 on, we have our copy of our customer's original order, providing the necessary measurements. We send out the completed covers or cushions by UPS. The cushion covers are all zippered, and customers apply replacement covers to their old cushions themselves. Since we intentionally make the covers a tight fit, it requires some muscle work and a little technique (we provide instructions); but our customers do it regularly and nobody has ever complained about difficulty. The usual completion time is 3 to 6 weeks, but it could vary according to how busy we are at the time. NOTES: (1) Please try to think about this by mid-year, if you want to have covers before the year-end holidays; if you wait until October, a sudden surge of orders at that time (as we experienced in 2005) could be more than we can handle before the holidays; (2) we only make replacement covers and cushions for furniture that we have made.

Basic labor charges for covers are $28 each for seats and backs, $38 per pair of arm pillow covers or padded arm rest covers. If there is a pattern that the customer asks to have matched or centered: Labor cost surcharges apply as follows: vertical matching (such as a vertical stripe that needs to be aligned between seat and back cushions): add $7 per seat cushion and back cushion, and be sure to allow extra yardage for the matching; horizontal matching, add $7 per seat or back cushion. Figure $22 for packing and shipping the covers for a sofa to an Eastern U.S. address. (Note: Replacements for padded arm rest covers made before 1997 may be somewhat different from the originals, but the replacements will fit on your padded forms; you will need to apply staples or tacks in a concealed location.)

If you provide the fabric, then all you pay is the labor cost plus a small shipping charge.

Q: Which is old, which is new, and which is updated? (With our furniture, it's hard to tell.) A: 14-year-old couch with new cushions, and with new end tables, in a snapshot (shown here) sent by a customer in Pennsylvania.

Inner cushions (IF you want to order them; usually people just buy replacement covers during the first 12 years or so after purchase.) Please note: The following prices include shipping charges for complete cushions going to Eastern U.S. locations. If you can pick up your cushions, subtract $14 per seat cushion and $11 per back from these prices: For standard firmness, in foam cushions up to 27" wide: $72 per seat that is up to 26" deep (sorry, costs of high-quality foam and of shipping have gone up sharply lately), $51 per back ($61 per back that is higher than 16 1/2"), and $32 per pair of arm pillows; for cushions wider than 27", add $17 per cushion; for firmer or softer than standard or for "loose fill" or "puffy" filling, add $2 per inch of length for either seats or backs, or $4 per inch for both. For 3"-deeper seat cushions, add $10 per cushion. Please note: These prices may be higher than you might find elsewhere, but for these prices you would be receiving foam of quality at least comparable to what you originally received, and better quality than what we were offering from 1997 to mid-2003. This is foam of the kind that usually lasts for at least 15 years of hard use, and often much longer than that, and in any case much longer than most cushion filling that you'll find locally. It's probably also more comfortable than most foam that's available locally. To read some of our customers' comments about their experiences with this cushion filling over the years, click here. For specifics about the quality of our "puffy" inner cushions and their adjustability, and for comparison of their features with those of our all-foam cushions, click here and scroll down to the text that's next to the first picture.

You would normally need 6 to 10 yards of 54"-wide fabric for a three-seat sofa with an exposed-wood frame (the yardage depending on exact size, whether you have fabric-covered arms, arm pillows, and/or a fabric-covered back, and whether matching of a pattern is needed). Our fabrics vary from $7/yd to $22yd and up (most are below $25/yard). Our normal completion time is about six weeks after your ordering or after our receipt of your fabric, if you provide the fabric.

If you have a fully-upholstered frame: You would normally need ten to thirteen yards of 54"-wide fabric to re-cover a three-seat sofa, the precise amount depending on size and options. Labor charges for re-covering a pre-1997 frame 78" or longer: $195, if the frame is brought to us; if we prepare the fabric for you to apply, the labor charge would be $110. For post-2004 fully-upholstered frames: $85 labor charge to prepare the fabric to be attached by customer for a 78" or longer sofa (allow four hours or so for your labor), if we apply the fabric to the frame, add an additional $90, plus travel cost if we come to your residence.

New covers on old cushion filling: Your old cushions may have become rounded down at the corners over the years. Replacement covers will be made in the original way (squarish at the corners), and your rounded-down, compressed foam may not initially fill out the corners of the new covers. A few days without the old covers will allow the old, constricted foam to re-expand somewhat. And a little work will considerably improve the appearance: pushing the foam into the corners and possibly adding some filling there and/or at the back edges of the cushions. Also: the normal imperfections resulting from applying new covers to old filling will be accentuated by any new fabric that has a sheen and that isn't very pliable (these are characteristics of many of the currently popular fabrics). 

To start your fabric search, come to our showroom if that is convenient for you, or go to the fabric section of this web site (there's a link to our home page below; once there, scroll down to the paragraph showing in bold, "Fabrics"). There are images that include our stock fabrics, which are available at unusually good prices. Also shown are many (but by no means all) of our special-order fabrics, as well as the web addresses of some our suppliers, where you can see images of a huge array of fabrics, often sorted according to your preferences of color, kind of fabric, etc. We are happy to send samples of any of those fabrics that you specify; please try to limit your first request to eight fabrics. We can ordinarily also look through our sample books and send you swatches of others if you describe what you're looking for.

Q: How do I know if the cushion filling needs to be replaced? A: Partly by judging for yourself as to whether the cushions look and feel O.K. Most mis-shaping can be corrected by just turning the cushions over, by pushing down on raised places while pulling up on low places, and by shifting the cover around the filling (by rubbing and tugging it). This will hopefully get (1) the seams and zippers straight and centered on the edges, and (2) the front corner seams (on seats) and top corner seams re-aligned squarely at the corners. Make sure to create some slack in the cover where the filling has been pressed down, to allow it to rise. (In the future, rotating and turning your cushions occasionally, before they become mis-shapen, will help prevent needing to do the above.) A little crumbling of the foam inside an older cushion is normal, but a lot usually means that the foam is on its way to needing replacing. Most of our customers seem to get new filling after about 15 years, but it varies: a few replace it after only 10 years and some don't even replace the filling when they buy new covers after 25 years. Also see the note above about imperfect appearance related to new covers on old foam.

Q: Will I need to take careful measurements of my furniture, for you to make correctly-sized replacement covers or cushions? A: No, in most cases, since we have copies of almost all orders completed back through 1978, as well as the appropriate cushion- and cover dimensions. For furniture made before 1978, or if we can't locate your order but can verify that you actually did buy your furniture from us, we will need the distance between your arms (inside to inside) and the zipper-to-zipper circumferences of one seat and one back cushion.

Q: I have fabric on the back of my sofa frame. How can that be changed? (Please note: In many cases, people don't bother changing the fabric on the back, if a sofa will always be against the wall.) A: Remove the cushions (also lift out the back rest panels and seat suspension, if it isn't a sleep sofa). Unbolt the back and lay it on a suitable work surface. Unscrew any thin plywood panel to which the fabric is attached (there may or may not be one, depending on model). Judge for yourself whether the old fabric needs to be removed; depending on how your back was made and the thickness of the old fabric, it may be possible to apply new fabric right on top of the old, saving the trouble of removing the old. If you do need to remove it, it can often be torn or cut off, rather than picking out staples. Apply the new fabric neatly, centering it if there are any seams or any pattern elements that need to be centered, stapling once in each of the four corners first, pulling the fabric taut and aligning any pattern or grain with the edges. Then pull the fabric snugly tight as you staple or tack it down every few inches (usually 1/4" "heavy duty" staples with a home staple gun do well). Re-attach the back and re-apply the other things.

Q: Do we need to send our old cushions to you, for applying the new covers? A: No, if there's somebody available in your household of normal strength (or maybe the teenager next door?). We send out replacement covers regularly to our past customers, together with a sheet of stuffing instructions. (It takes a little bit of technique to do it without damaging the zippers, as well as some muscle work, since we intentionally make the covers a snug fit; even our old filling usually still has good firmness). The only time we've heard from customers who had problems was once in 1998, when the stuffing instructions weren't sent along with the covers; please make sure you find and follow the instructions. If you want a looser fit, for greater ease of replacing covers, we can over-size the covers, but you would have to expect some wrinkling in the fabric after it's been sat on, and a little effort would still be required to change the covers.

Q: Do you make replacement covers or cushions for furniture that you haven't made? A: No. We have the patterns and the skills for making sure that covers and cushions come out just right for frames that we have made (including models and sizes that we aren't offering currently), but not for other manufacturers' frames, which are always different from ours.

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