Designs for sofas and booth seating

[jameslee]

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

[sofadoc]

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.

[brmax]

  Great link, Tips like that just don't get much better.

Thank you

[byhammerandhand]

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

[wizzard]

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.

[jameslee]

Thank you everyone for your links and for your help.

Like wizzard mentioned, we plan to focus primarily on reupholstering.

[Darren Henry]

we 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...