Sater 2.5 seat sofa to leather chair

Materials: Sater 2.5 seat sofa (leather), assorted hand tools

Description: My roommate and I bought an IKEA Sater 2.5 seat sofa, and after about 6 months of normal use (never more than 2 people sitting on it, it snapped in half, folding like a hinge, with the frame resting on the floor. We lost the receipt, so we couldn't get a new one from IKEA :(

We put it up on cinder blocks for a few months, but when we moved apartments, I couldn't bear to throw it away, so I decided to chop it in half, reconnect one of the arms to the cut-end, and create an awesome chair.



I used a jigsaw, handsaw, utility knife and screwdriver to carefully peel back the leather, cut the appropriate boards and remove half the spring assembly. Once that was done, I took the vertical armrest off of the cut-end and began to secure it to the good half of the new chair. Because the legs are part of the vertical armrest, the process was that much easier.

I used steel mending plates (rectangular and L-shaped plates with screw holes) to brace all the new joints. I also used about a dozen 1" wood screws. Most of this process was freehand and improvised, but all the materials cost less than $40 at a local home improvement store.

Once the frame was assembled, all that remained was to stitch the leather back up (I'm still working on this, as you might notice from the picture). If you do this right, the new chair will be big enough for two, and you can either keep the side pillows or discard for more seating room.

This isn't a project you're likely to try unless your Sater has snapped like mine did, but I thought this was a cool hack nonetheless. Better to spend $40 and a Saturday and end up with a chair than to throw a whole couch in a landfill.

Thanks for looking!

~ Wes, Baltimore, MD, USA