My father and I will start doing upholstery work from our garage (he's going to teach me) and I am curious about a couple things having to do with designs.
Where does one find plans for making booths and sofas and custom made furniture? I mean the "blueprints" for lack of a better word (can anyone tell me what the correct term is?).
Is there an industry standard book from where all plans are derived or is it an in-house type undertaking? Can plans be bought? Is there booth, sofa related CAD type software?
-James
This isn't really a "blueprint". But it's a pretty nice "How-to" for building restaurant booths.
http://www.carrscorner.com/booths.php
You can Google "Sofa frame plans" and get a lot of links. But most of them aren't free.
Places like Chervan sell the frame kits ready to assemble.
Great link, Tips like that just don't get much better.
Thank you
Here's another one, though this guy if more of a woodworker than upholsterer (I know him from his woodworking articles) http://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/articles/build-a-breakfast-booth-video-series-intro.aspx
there is a standard in interior design with seating. seat height, depth and some other factors - Interior Design Standards
Easiest way: search google for commercial restaurant booths, there is a myriad of designs out there with detail drawing.
That should keep you going for a while. Just for your info, that field is very competitive and it will be hard to compete efficiently against some of the big manufacturers. I had more success in re-upholstering this booths than producing them.
Thank you everyone for your links and for your help.
Like wizzard mentioned, we plan to focus primarily on reupholstering.
Quotewe plan to focus primarily on reupholstering.
I'm sure you already had planned to make templates for your regulars so that you can have the skins pre-sewn before you pick up the seats as they always want them back by lunch service. Another real time saver is if you can sell them a couple of "spares". I've had a couple of clients do that and works well. They can swap out a seat or two and still use that booth while the damaged seats are in my shop and then trade them for the next 2-4 etc...