Upholstery Finder/Guides/Fourteen questions to ask an upholsterer before you book

Fourteen questions to ask an upholsterer before you book

I built this section by reading 185 California furniture workrooms' websites and recording what each one says it does. The interesting part wasn't what they say. It was what they all leave out, and the gaps turned out to be remarkably consistent.

Three of them are worth naming up front, because they are why this page exists:

• Not one shop in 185 publishes a per-piece price list. Zero. I tried to make price a column and abandoned it.
• Seven per cent say anything about whether you can bring your own fabric. I tested that twice, with two different definitions, in case the first wording was the problem. Same answer.
• Six per cent give a usable turnaround time.

Every question below exists because a lot of shops don't answer it in public, and you'll only find out by asking. They're roughly in the order you'd ask them.

Before you go anywhere

1. Will you take this piece on at all? The one that saves the most time. Marine cushions, restaurant booths, cane and rush seats, mid-century frames, these are separate skills, and a shop that doesn't do yours would rather say so on the phone. Each listing here records what the shop names, so you can cross off the obvious mismatches first.

2. Do you quote from photographs? 31 of the 185 shops will. That turns a Saturday of driving into twenty minutes of emailing. Expect the figure to firm up once someone sees the piece.

3. Is the estimate free? 85 shops say yes in public. The rest don't say either way, which usually means ask.

About the piece

4. Is the frame sound, and did you check? The question that decides whether the job is worth doing. 32 shops here do frame repair and 27 do spring replacement, those are the ones equipped to answer properly.

5. Are the springs staying or going? Eight-way hand-tied springs are worth keeping and worth paying to re-tie. Serpentine wire usually isn't. A shop that can tell you which you have is a shop worth using. Be ready for the answer to cost more rather than less: re-tying by hand is slow skilled work, and it is priced like it.

6. Has this been recovered before, and does that add time? Stripping somebody else's work is billable hours before yours begin. If the last person used staples where tacks belonged, add more.

7. What's the foam situation? 108 shops here list cushions and foam as a service. New foam is often the difference between a sofa that looks restored and one that feels it, and it is commonly $50 to $200 a cushion, so it is worth pricing separately rather than discovering it inside a lump sum.

About the fabric

8. How many yards, and what happens if it runs short? Get the yardage in writing. A re-order on a discontinued fabric can add weeks, and someone has to pay for the extra. Published guides put a large sofa or sectional at 18 to 36 yards, so a big number is not automatically a wrong one.

9. Can I supply my own fabric, and what do you charge to handle it? This is the seven per cent question. Almost no shop states a policy in public, and I know that unusually well: the first time I measured it, a text search suggested half the sites mentioned it, and the search turned out to be matching ".com" inside email addresses rather than "COM", the trade's term for customer's own material. Corrected, it was seven per cent. Where a handling fee is published it's around $15 to $20 a yard.

10. Can I see the fabric in person before I commit? 91 shops have a showroom or sample books on site. Fabric in a photograph is a different colour from fabric in your living room, every time. A showroom visit also gets you the one thing no website has: what is actually in stock this month.

11. Will the pattern be matched across the piece? If it has a repeat, matching it costs yardage and hours. Find out whether the quote includes it. Ask the same about welting and skirts, which are the other two places a quote quietly diverges.

About the work and the wait

12. Who is actually doing the job? Some shops do everything in house. Some send frame or wood work out. Neither is wrong, 48 shops here do wood refinishing themselves, but you should know whose bench your chair sits on, and it matters for who you ring when something is wrong.

13. How long, assuming the fabric is in stock? The "assuming" is the whole question. Fabric delivery is what usually stretches a two-week job into six. There's more on this in how long reupholstery takes.

14. What isn't in this quote? Ask it last and ask it plainly. Delivery, collection, foam, frame repair, pattern matching and disposal of the old covers are the usual answers. 17 of the 185 shops say collection and delivery is free, so it is a fair thing to ask about rather than assume.

One question not to bother with

Don't ask how long they've been trading and treat the answer as a verdict. It's a genuine signal, plenty of shops here have been going since the 1960s and one since the 1920s, but a good upholsterer who went out on their own four years ago will do better work than a tired one with a long lease.

Ask question 4 instead. Whether someone has properly looked at your frame tells you more about how they work than a founding date ever will.

If the answers are good and the price still hurts

That is the right moment to ask whether the piece deserves it, rather than before. Reupholster or replace has the ninety-second frame test, and what reupholstery actually costs has the published California figures.

The shops are listed by city, each with what it takes on and how it quotes.