Time to Order Upholstery

Well, I have been laying low for the last week, and I am chomping at the bit to get going again. I can smell my September deadline and it makes me nervous. I plan to finish polishing the window frames and drip edges this week and get back to the farm for an all Shasta work weekend. My next two weekends after this are booked, so I need to make some serious progress this weekend.

As far as progress is concerned, we have made progress in the last two days on our upholstery. We got the yardage estimates from our upholstery gal Cheryl, not my wife, don’t get confused, stay with me. Anyway, she gave us the go-ahead, so we ordered our fabric from Designtex in Kansas City.

See it all started a couple months ago when we bought the trailer. Cheryl (my wife, sheesh…will you stay with me?) has a friend who is a graphic designer and is pretty artsy/design conscious, so of course Cheryl emails her telling her about our new Shasta endeavor. She explains that we are trying to decide on some upholstery fabric and that we hadn’t really found what we were looking for yada yada yada. Her friend replies, “Hey my stepmom works for Designtex in Kansas City; here’s her email.” So long story short, a few days later we have about 100 big fabric samples in a couple UPS boxes with accompanying emails telling us which ones to look at closely. We agonized over the choices, looking at them here in the house, at work with coworkers, and in the camper, and in the camper with coworkers… Okay, you get the idea. Let me tell you, always get samples. What you see on your screen is not necessarily what the fabric really looks like. Not to mention you get the tactile feel of the textile. (Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) This is important because once they cut it off the big roll somewhere far away, they don’t want it back.

So we made our decision, and when I say we, I mean Cheryl. Did I mention that I love being married? I mean, I occasionally said “blech, not that one,” or “I really like that one,” but mostly I was happy to let her make the final decision especially since it is the singly most expensive decision of this whole project. The fabric we chose is a thick, durable, yet soft and supple, extreme performance fabric, with a stain blocking Crypton finish called Samba Otra Vez in the colors Melon and Azure. The gaucho will be wrapped in the Azure and the dinette will be wrapped in a two-tone similar in style to the original using both the Melon and Azure. So after ordering the proper yardage of each, we found ourselves about $500 closer to the budget goal line.

Here are the pics of the fabric with a disclaimer from my wife that even if they look weird or ugly, really they aren't, it is just your monitor playing tricks on you. They are actually quite lovely:

Samba Otra Vez --Melon

Samba Otra Vez --Azure

As far as cushions go, we decided to replace the rear gaucho with new foam from The Foam Guys on eBay. We ordered two 6” pieces of foam, a 36” x 75” and an 18” x 75” as well as two 8” bolsters all wrapped in glued-on Dacron for about $250. They were great to deal with and made the foam to our custom specifications down to the inch. The dinette cushions we will reuse tweeking/replacing bent springs and covering them in 1/2” Sew Foam to make them comfy again.

We found curtain and throw pillow fabric to match the upholstery at Fabric.com. We ordered 7 yards of Sweet Potato and 7 yards of black-out liner for the curtains, and a yard of Glam Design Sweet Potato/Cream and a yard of Akita Cream/Sweet Potato, two accompanying fabrics for pillows. Fabric.com was having a 25% off sale on orders over $75 with free shipping. Our bill was about $80, but I figure we saved about $50 from the next best-priced vendor. Here are samples of the curtain and accent fabric:

Sweet Potato (Curtains)

Glam Design Sweet Potato/Cream (Pillows)

Akita Cream/Sweet Potato (Pillows)

Cheryl’s mom has been forced into service; I mean has volunteered to make curtains for the camper. We loved the curtains she made for our dining room so much that she should have known she was in trouble. Hopefully the fabric will all get here in the next week or so, and we can get it to Cheryl’s mom and Cheryl (the upholstery gal, see you’re getting it).

Anyway, not much physical progress, but final decisions were made and big money was spent and that’s something.

So, if you are following along, so far we have:

Trailer $900

Bearing Repack $100

Steel $10

Sealant $10

Fan-Tastic Fan $140

Three Sheets 1/8 Birch $50

3M Polish $18

Buffer Pad $12

Mothers Aluminum Polish $8

TSP Cleaner/Paint Prep $8

Rollers, brushes and trays $30

Frog Tape $10

Etching Primer $5

Goo Gone $3

Paint 3 Gallons $98

Foam $250

Upholstery Fabric $510

Curtain Fabric $80

Bringing our tally to: $2,242

Until next time dear readers, shasta la vista...