Fixes for the long term: Whether to reupholster depends on a budget, an object’s value to owner

MOSES LAKE — Diana Derricott said there are three questions people should ask themselves when they’re trying to decide whether to reupholster furniture.

“Is it something that you love? Is it something that you cannot replace in your decor, whatever your design is. And also, do you have a budget?” she said.

“My speech I give people is that you have to love, love, love it, or it’s great-great-great-great-grandma’s chair, or it’s something you can’t replace in what you’re doing. Because upholstery work is an investment into the piece.”

Derricott is the co-owner, with her husband Ernie, of Ernie’s Upholstery Shop at 1204 E. Wheeler Road, Moses Lake.

The 10 chairs Ernie Derricott was covering on a recent Thursday were an example of the criteria.

The chairs were part of a dining set damaged in a fire, a gift from the owner’s son. She opted to fix them, replacing the damaged covering with new leather.

Diana Derricott estimated each chair would take four to five hours to fix. But the advantage for the customer is it will be a long-term fix.

“Unless it’s in a fire again, she can give them to her grandkids. They’ll last another 50, 60, 70 years,” she said.

The antique footstool was another case where the memories outweighed the expense for the owner.

“She used to sit on this when she was a little girl,” Diana Derricott said.

The owner had material left over from another project and wanted the old footstool restored.

“We get the stories behind each piece. Which is nice –that’s the part I like. We enjoy the stories behind each project that we do,” she said.

There was the club chair the owners had upholstered in leather.

“It went home, and the 2-year-old child got hold of a letter opener, the second day after it got home from the upholstery shop. So it went out in the garage for 20 years,” Ernie Dericott said.

The owners had him reupholster it.

Then there was the office chair, a custom build inherited by its original owner’s son.

“His (the son’s) wife threw it outside and was going to throw it away,” Ernie Dericott said. “He dug it out from outside, after it had been out there for (about) two years, and had us redo it for him.”

The window seat cushion is an example of a project that would be hard to find in a retail store. It’s nine feet long, cut to fit the bench.

“Anything that’s specialty, or a custom piece, or something unique, is the time you want to bring it to the upholstery shop,” Diana Derricott said.

And while upholstery can look like a do-it-yourself project, sometimes it’s not.

“You don’t know how many times we’ve gotten customers that have said, ‘I started it, and I gave up, and I decided to bring it to the professionals,’” she said.

There are a lot of things out there that need upholstery – cars, boats, golf carts, even firetruck seats and chiropractic tables. It might seem cars would predominate, but Ernie Dericott said it’s not so.

“It’s about 50-50” furniture-autos, he said. “And a lot of the car stuff is like the furniture stuff.”

In fact, sometimes the furniture parts are repurposed, which was the case with a 1940s truck.

Once the owner found the seats he wanted, he couldn’t afford leather for the interior, Ernie Derricott said.

“So I said, ‘Do you have a leather couch?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I have a black leather couch.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you buy your wife a new couch, and take the couch out in the garage?’ And that’s what he did,” Ernie Derricott said. The leather was recycled into the truck interior.

Upholstery was the family business for Ernie Derricott, who is the fourth of five generations in upholstery, he said. But his career path led him in another direction, eventually coming to Moses Lake and working with a flooring and carpet business.

When it closed in 2013, he opened Ernie’s Upholstery, and it’s now so busy the shop is scheduled two months out, Diana Derricott said.