Upholstery Repair and Replacement, in detail

A cushion that has gone flat, sags in the middle, or bottoms out under a seated adult has a foam problem rather than a fabric problem. Foam is specified by density and by compression rating, and factory RV cushions are usually built to the lowest number that felt acceptable in a showroom. Six or eight years of one person sitting in the same spot crushes the cell structure permanently, and no amount of new upholstery over that core changes how it feels. Recovering it produces a cushion that looks new for roughly a week of real use.

Cushions get priced as a core plus a cover, separately, so an owner can see which half the money is buying. A dinette set recovered over new high density foam with a dacron wrap costs more than a recover alone, and it is the version still supporting weight in five years. Where a sofa or a theater seat has a cracked internal frame or a collapsed spring deck, the honest answer is that rebuilding the frame is more labour than a new unit costs, and we say that before quoting a cover for it.

• Foam specified by density and compression, not by thickness alone
• Dacron wrap for edge definition, so a new cover does not read as loose
• Seat and back cores rated separately, because the seat carries the load
• Closed cell foam where a cushion sits against an exterior wall

Theater seating is the most requested furniture change on a Class A or a luxury fifth wheel, and the one most often specified without measuring. A powered recliner needs wall clearance behind it to travel, and that number is not its footprint. A unit sitting flat against the rear wall in a showroom needs several inches of standoff to recline, which pushes its front edge further into the aisle, which can foul a slide room on retraction. Where the theater wall is itself a slide face, the clearance has to work in both room positions.

Power brings its own requirements. A pair of recliners with heat, lumbar and USB draws real current, and the factory 12 volt run to that wall was sized for a sofa with nothing in it. We check gauge and fuse before committing, and we build a mounting base rather than trusting the original sofa lag pattern, because a recliner puts load into the floor in a different place and a different direction than a static sofa did. Work of that kind sits in the upper half of the band rather than the middle.

Dinette removal is the conversion an owner is most likely to regret and the one we most often recommend anyway. The gain is real, because a booth that only seats two adults comfortably becomes a sofa that seats three. The costs are less obvious. A dinette usually hides storage under both benches, sometimes a tank access, sometimes the only floor duct on that side of the coach. It anchors into the floor and the wall in a pattern a sofa base will not reuse, which leaves holes to seal and flooring that stops where the bench used to stand.

That last point decides the sequence. A conversion done on top of existing flooring almost always shows an outline, because vinyl under a bench never saw light or foot traffic and has not aged with the rest of the room. Doing the conversion with new flooring, or at minimum new flooring in that room, is the version that looks like it came from the factory that way. If the coach is already in for a floor, converting at the same time costs a fraction of what the same conversion costs standing alone.

Orange County air is hard on interior soft goods in a way inland owners never see. Salt settles out of a marine layer onto everything, humidity swings between a damp morning and a dry Santa Ana afternoon, and UV through an unshaded window is relentless even in January. Woven fabric holds salt and moisture in the fibre, which is how a sofa in a coach stored near the water develops a musty smell nobody can locate and a fade line down the window side. Marine grade vinyl wipes clean, sheds salt, and holds no water in a weave.

Vinyl is not the automatic answer. It runs warm to sit on in a closed coach in August, it feels cheap if the wrong weight is specified, and it will crack at a seam if a low grade product goes into a high flex location like a recliner hinge. Our default for a coastally stored unit is marine grade vinyl on seat and arm surfaces where hands and salt land, with fabric or a performance weave on backs and accent panels. Owners who store inland and only visit the coast can run that the other way round.

Any seat on a motorhome with a belt anchored to it is a compliance item, and it is the one place in interior work where an owner's preference does not get to win. The belt load path runs through the seat frame into a reinforcement in the floor structure, and that path was engineered as an assembly. Swapping a belted dinette bench for an unbelted sofa removes a designated seating position, which changes what the coach is rated to carry and can change how a carrier or a future buyer reads the unit.

We replace belted furniture with furniture carrying the same anchor provision, mounted into the same reinforcement, torqued to specification, and photographed at each anchor before trim goes back on. Where an owner wants a unit with no belt provision in a belted position, we decline that specific substitution and put the alternatives in writing. This is not a judgement about how anybody travels. A belt anchored into a stapled plywood base is simply not a repair we are willing to have our licence number attached to.

Recovering existing furniture is skilled hand labour and it bills as hours, not as material. Stripping a sofa, patterning each panel off the old cover, cutting, sewing and fitting it back over a rebuilt core is most of a working week on a large piece. A new RV sofa from a furniture supplier arrives finished, in a size built for a coach, with hardware in the box. On a mid value or low value trailer the arithmetic is not close, because the new unit lands well under what recovering the old one costs and it comes in a current fabric.

Recovering wins in three situations. The piece is a size nobody makes any more, common in older Class C dinettes and in bus conversion seating. The piece is genuinely better built than anything sold now, which is true of most bus conversion furniture and some older domestic sofas. Or the owner is matching an existing set where only one piece has failed. Outside those cases we quote both paths and point at the cheaper one, even though the cheaper one is considerably less work for us and a smaller invoice.

Numbers and photographs before the drive save a wasted appointment. Send a wide shot of each piece in place, a close shot of the worst wear, and the tag if the furniture still carries one. Measure the piece, then the opening it lives in, then the aisle in front of it with the slides in. That last number is the one everybody forgets, and it is the number that decides whether a recliner is possible in that position at all rather than merely whether it fits against the wall.

Tell us how the coach is stored and how it gets used, because that shifts the material recommendation more than anything else on the list. A unit living under cover and travelling a few weeks a year is a different specification than one sitting in coastal sun year round with a dog in it. Bring a fabric sample if you have a target. Bring the cushion you like least as well, since one bad cushion tells us more about the foam across the whole coach than any description does.

• Wide photograph of each piece plus a close shot of the worst wear
• Piece dimensions, opening dimensions, and aisle width with slides in
• Storage location and months per year the coach is in use
• Any belt anchored position noted separately from the rest