Couch Reupholstery FAIL!

I knew it would be time-consuming. I knew it wouldn't be easy. I knew I would need patience and some critical thinking skills and proper tools.
But what I didn't know was that I was capable of stringing together obscenities crude enough to make Joe Biden blush. Between staples jutting out and cutting my fingers, or the fabric not doing what I wanted it to (read: me not being able to stretch it effectively), I consistently felt irritated throughout this stupid-ass project and voiced my frustrations without hesitation.

I should have initially taken one good look at the couch and decided not to even go there. But no, my hatred for the red slipcover overcame any good sense I should have had.

Here is what I had to work with:
Those are WICKED curves.

Here were my main obstacles, with curves being the toughest:

I just wanted it to be as simple as possible (read: I wanted to be lazy about it). Knowing I could just [attempt to] staple my fabric over the existing floral crap, I set out with these tools (pliers and the staple gun/staples being the most important):

I began by ripping off the back piping. Man did that have lots of long, ninja-like staples that attacked my fingers.

Hence the scratches/injuries:

After pulling out all the staples and saying lots of curse words, Conn decided to defend his momma and make enemies with the piping. He was being cute so of course I had to pause and observe:
Next step: staple the black fabric to the back along the same line where I had just removed the piping. I had to use my hammer on most of the staples to flatten them down/drive them in:
And cut away the excess fabric above the staple line. So far, so good:
ENTER KITTY PROTESTER NUMBER TWO:

When I wrapped the black fabric over the top, here is where a whole sequence of cuss words came flying from my mouth. For one thing, I leaned up against the back with my knees, which had just been kneeling in a dusty spot or something, and so I contaminated the back with dust. And second, the two humps in the middle were ridiculous and did NOT want to be covered:

I got really annoyed/bored/impatient/distracted at this point and went off to do something much more rewarding, and haven't really come back since.

Here is how the couch looks as of right now.


It. is. pathetic. You can tell me, I won't even deny it.
I give up. If this were more of a squarish couch, I could have done it. And quite frankly, I don't even like the shape of this couch, so why am I bothering with it?

To my ugly couch with its hidden staples, I say SCREW YOU. One day, I will take great pleasure in abandoning you by the dumpster. And one day, I will take even greater joy in burning the slipcover. But for now, we're just going to pretend this never happened. I'm going to try to salvage some of the black fabric and will continue to curse this stupid, hideous couch.

Lesson learned: leave major reupholstery projects to the pros.