Repair and restoration of furniture: do-it-yourself carriage coupler

Recommendation points

• Removing the upholstery
• Base repair and filler replacement
• Carriage coupler or its imitation
• Button setting, pre-tensioning
• Carriage coupler decoration, decors and doorways

Even exclusive designer furniture loses its glamor over time, is it worth talking about antiques? A carriage coupler is a fairly widely used finishing technique and the ability to properly pull it up will be useful to anyone who is focused on restoring old but dear furniture.

Removing the upholstery

Despite the fact that products of completely different kinds are finished with a carriage coupler, there are only two ways to decorate the edges. They can be wound on the back of the part, where the fastening with brackets will be hidden by adjacent furniture elements. Otherwise, the fabric is attached on the front side and covered with a decorative strip with visible fastening with nails with decorated hats.

The base for fastening can be solid wood or plywood, respectively, different efforts will have to be made to remove the nails and staples. To do this, you can use a screwdriver, the tip of which is wrapped with electrical tape to preserve the wooden varnished coatings and other adjacent elements..

The reverse side has a continuous upholstery of lining or front material; it must be removed carefully to obtain a finished pattern. The foam lining can be easily peeled off, it always changes. Then the cover of the compartment with the fastening of buttons is unscrewed and removed. The threads need to be cut, then the front upholstery is removed along with the buttons and removed.

Base repair and filler replacement

If the furniture needs to be repaired, then before restoring the screed and upholstery, the best moment for this.

The upper layer of foam rubber is removed immediately, the inner one with perforation is assessed for drying out and retaining its shape. If you need to replace, you must first measure the diameters of the holes, the pitch and spacing, and transfer them to the drawing. You need to cut holes in the foam according to the markings applied with a marker, do this with a conveniently sharpened tin can. Perforated foam rubber is laid in 2-4 layers of 12 mm each, while one solid layer of the same thickness is placed on top and bottom. It is recommended to bond the packing layers with glue, which is applied by spray or brush..

It is imperative to evaluate how loose the plywood base of the screed has become. This is checked by the degree of squeezing of the sheet, bending of about 3-4 mm per meter is allowed. If chipboard was used as a base, it is advisable to reinforce it with an overlay sheet of 5 mm plywood 70–100 mm smaller. Holes for threading through the shield are restored from the wrong side.

The supporting frame of the furniture has connection nodes, all of them must be checked for rigidity and additionally strengthened if necessary. In the general case, all joints are examined, access to which is blocked by the skin. In parallel, the restoration of wooden parts and their varnishing are carried out.

Carriage coupler or its imitation

Sometimes it is worth thinking about a device for imitating a coach tie. This technique is ideal for the design of low-duty wall panels and furniture surfaces. The advantage of imitation is that access to the back side of the sheet is not required, plus the material is fastened not with a single canvas, but with diamond-shaped fragments. At the same time, the upholstery fabric should be elastic, i.e. stretch a little.

The design starts from the top, where a strip of material is nailed, the edge of which is trimmed with triangular teeth to the size of the screed element with an allowance of 15–20 mm. The required number of square fragments is cut to the size of the tooth. As a stuffing, exactly the same perforated foam rubber is used, but the top layer without perforation must be shot in the centers of the holes. If you are making a shield from scratch, start by marking the attachment points of the buttons and hammer in the studs without hats to transfer the marks through the foam rubber.

First, the teeth of the strip of the upper row are targeted, then a square element is laid on them with the same overlap and its lower corner is targeted. The edges need to be folded once and align the fold lines, then shoot the left and right sides. At the end, the excess fabric is cut out at the upper corner fold, the corner is fixed with a bracket and the next element is installed. After the notch is fully formed, an upholstery nail with a wide decorated head is driven into it..

The extreme row ends in exactly the same way as the screed began, but it is also allowed to bend the edges of the fragments to the back side and fix them there.

Button setting, pre-tensioning

The main advantage of a real carriage coupler is its strength and integrity of the coating, this is especially important at the headboards of berths and on the seats, where it tempts to pick out the fold with your finger. However, a solid canvas cannot be replaced or partially repaired as easily as the imitation allows, so choose wisely.

The canvas for the carriage screed is cut with a margin of 10-15 cm per meter of surface, it must be applied to the foam rubber and pre-leveled. Then a long needle through the hole on the back is punctured in the fabric to mark the location of the button.

Thread a thread into the needle and tie it into a loop, then pierce the fabric from the front side and pull it to the inside of the shield. A nylon thread tied to the ear of a decorative button is threaded into the loop, and then the free end is pulled to the wrong side.

The fabric above the button is stretched with the formation of a vertical fold and is targeted either at the edge of the tie or on the back of the product. After that, a puncture and broach of the second button of the upper row is performed, a fold is formed again and the edge is shot. The steps are the same for each button on the top row..

For the buttons of the second and subsequent rows, the installation sites are outlined, broaching is performed in turn. The threads must be pulled slightly so that the buttons are pressed in by 1–2 cm. The stretched thread must be shot with a staple to the wooden shelf of the box.

When the button is pressed in, a fold in the fabric forms by itself. It remains only to trim it a little, eliminate twists and kinks..

Carriage coupler decoration, decors and doorways

Only after all the buttons are installed, you can direct the gloss. It is better to do this together: one person presses the button down to the desired depth and finally evens out the folds. The other stands on the back of the shield and picks out the slack of the thread by pulling it under the bracket. Then the thread is turned in the opposite direction and shot again, unfolded again and attached in the third place.

Now the tightened fabric can be fastened around the entire perimeter with staples every 4–5 cm, slightly pulling the fabric. If fastening is carried out on the front, the edges of the fabric must be cut with a margin of 10-15 mm from the point of fastening. After trimming, the fabric is folded under itself once and sighted again, forming an even fold at the end.

The traces of fastening with staples are covered with a strip of decor. You can buy a ready-made one with a calibrated thickness, but usually a three-fold strip of the same upholstery material is used for this. If you are making it yourself, make sure that both edges are stitched with a decorative nail, otherwise the strip may fray over time. The decor is installed with almost no tension and is fastened with nails every 10-30 mm.