what would it cost me to build my own sofa, no legs?
buying one would set me back roughly 700$ to 1500$.
surely making one myself would cost like 200 bucks tops.
what would it cost me to build my own sofa, no legs? buying one would set me back roughly 700$ to 1500$.
1. Wood or metal? Choose whichever you have the gear, skills, and materials for.
2. Fresh materials or stuff you have lying around? Used materials are much cheaper.
3. Curved design or straight? Straight is simpler.
4. How much upholstering are you doing? less is cheaper, but more voids requires more thoughtful design.
5. Are you building it so you can easily remove the fabric and wash it? I've thought about using fabric wraps bound with velcro around cushions, because that's easiest to remove and launder.
6. Can you sew and do you have a sewing machine?
7. How valuable is your time?
>1. Wood or metal? Choose whichever you have the gear, skills, and materials for.
wood. i don't have gear to cut metal, i can probably borrow a saw a drill and a sander. is that all i'll need?
>2. Fresh materials or stuff you have lying around? Used materials are much cheaper.
i haven't looked into this but a friend of mine buikd a bed with pallets, so it got me thinking.
>4. How much upholstering are you doing? less is cheaper, but more voids requires more thoughtful design.
>5. Are you building it so you can easily remove the fabric and wash it? I've thought about using fabric wraps bound with velcro around cushions, because that's easiest to remove and launder.
im probably using cloth, im not sure what materials are used to fill in the cushion.
>6. Can you sew and do you have a sewing machine?
i can learn or ask for help
>7. How valuable is your time?
worthless
how much dollars of material am i looking at not accounting for cost of borrowing tools
1. If you're going wood, you need to design it correctly the first time or be ready to prototype it with your shitty materials first for testing. A straight design is simplest and easiest.
2. Pallets are usually treated with and often exposed to some very nasty chemicals, make sure they don't touch people in the end product. Wouldn't hurt to hose them off, let them soak for a few days, then let them dry for a few weeks. Be very careful not to inhale their sawdust.
3. For cushions you can use anything. I washed then shredded old cotton clothes I got from the trash bin at Goodwill, stuffed these into thrift store pillow cases, sewed buttons into both sides and linked them together, and those are my cushions. I then wrapped the velcro'd cover around that. If you're really paranoid about stains/smells, make two covers: one like a pillowcase you zipper or button or velcro shut; and another that you do the same to but slightly bigger.
4. Buy some working used sewing machine and then look up youtube videos on its model.
5. You can build this with a saw, wood scraps, nails, and time.
Lol, you can't even buy suitable foam for $200
I built my own 94" sofa 15 years ago, very simple contemporary design with no fancy piping or tufting or buttons on the four microfiber cushion covers...
Wood (mostly Baltic birch ply) was about $120
Microfiber fabric and zippers were about the same
Sewing by an actual upholstery shop was $250
High density foam for the seat, back and two end bolsters was $400
I could have made it smaller or used cheaper foam, fabric and plywood but anything larger than a loveseat would still have been hard to get below maybe $600.
At the time a fugly generic semi-custom three seater started at about $700 with glorified burlap fabric...
I spent more than I planned to at $900 but comparable sofas that size and style were easily 2 1/2 to 3 times that and more.
why the frick is foam this expensive?
Because it's a petroleum product and the chemicals used to make it are highly regulated, as is the process used to manufacture the foam...which means lots of permits and related compliance costs, plus only a handful of facilities that can make both the foam and (especially) the raw precursor chemicals because of NIMBYism, all of which creates low/slow supplies at every step of the process....which leads to artifically inflated prices of a high demand material.
Do you think this is essentially the same reasoning (sans "petroleum based")...behind chip shortages etc?
I do.
I.e. NIMBYism about pollution & redtape due to same.
I thought the chip shortage was due to only a couple facilities in taiwan knowing how to make them and keeping it a secret
standard density of foam for sofas is around 1.8 pounds per cubic feet.
Rounds up to 40 dollars per kilo, im a metric guy.
Cotton at a farm gate goes for around 2 dollars per kilo, try to get that or just use sealed bags of sawdust for bulk filler. Cotton at a grocery store goes for 30 dollars per kilo.
Couldn't you just buy one of those 100$ firm mattresses in a box for the foam?
>100$ firm mattresses in a box for the foam?
I dont know whats in these, really these have cheap foam for the taking?
Shhh, don’t fricking ruin it
Should be possible. I dont know how much foam costs at a wholesale distributor, i got that $34 per cubic foot price at that website
whatever you're going to make will look like dogshit. look around estate sales, auctions, flea markets. got a used italian leather sofa for five hundo
Dude you need carpentry, metal working, then custom made cushions, then you would still have to sewing and upholstery.
Good fricking luck.
6 million nano-seconds in MS Paint
is this like the base
what about the arms/back
The base and arms back are posts that go to the floor as legs, to which you attach more planks, then you attach 1x2s between the planks as springs. The you velcro the cushions to that.
Buying a used couch or scooping a freebie off of fb marketplace is faster, easier, and cheaper than building. If you really want the premium sitting experience without paying an arm and a leg then go to the clearance section at a furniture store and grab an old floor model.
do hardware stores even give handicap discounts?
>surely making one myself would cost like 200 bucks tops.
anything you don't understand myst be easy/cheap to make.
no it would cost almost certainly double the price of buying one. if you don't understand why do some research.
it doesn't matter, you won't do it.
JUST STAND UP.
LAZY ASS.
Or start with an old one and go from there to save costs I dunno
only if you care about the colours or materials (leather) it gets expensive, i just get the comfiest one
I went out and measured my own sofa cushions. one of the back cushions weighs 2.4 kilo and measures around 45 x 25 x 75, thats 84 liters of filler at a density 0.03 kilos per liter.
I figure that a sofa has at least 4 cushions, and the sofa body is quite rigid with just a bit of cushioning. So round up the foam requirements to an equivalent of 5 cushions
You need 12 kilos of foam or 16 cubic feet
https://foamonline.com/product-category/foam/high-density-foam/
Its sold for 34 dollars per cubic feet, so the cost will be at least $544 on foam alone
Maybe you can cheap it out with sawdust or recycled mattresses