Our professional team is ready to help you with your design projects - large or small. Our amazing selections of designers, furnishings, fabrics, leather and finishes is unrivaled by any furniture stores in Houston.As Hilaire mentioned, Brittany and I recently traveled to the western part of the state to attend Lee Academy.  Lee Industries, one of our favorite upholstery companies, invited us to visit their factories, to see how their furniture and fabrics are made, and to meet the people who touch and shape the furniture we love!  It was a wonderful experience, and I’d love to share a bit about it with you! I stand above with Norman Coley, the president of the company, his lovely wife Bondi who manages their marketing, and Brittany.  Norman’s father, Bill Coley, started the company in 1969.  It is truly a family-run company.  Our sales rep is Norman’s sister!  Norman and Bondi were so kind to invite us for dinner at their beautiful home on Lake Hickory.  I went there as a child before my grandparents moved to Lake Norman, so I was excited to see familiar places.

Soaring windows in their great room open to a stunning view of the lake.  Naturally, their home is filled with Lee furniture.  Slipcovered sofas and leather chairs work wonderfully for a family with two boys and a dog!  With such a great place to enjoy time outdoors, it made me wonder if that might have influenced their unique outdoor line. Their Uncovered outdoor collection features fully upholstered furniture that can withstand the elements.  I couldn’t help but feature it as part of Drool-Worthy Weekly when we were first introduced to it!   You may be wondering what I’m doing in the picture above.  To see how easy the outdoor furniture is to maintain, we got the opportunity to power wash Norman’s chair. Before, the chair had mud, leaves, and dog hair in it.  Norman says it’s their dog Tucker’s favorite place to sit, and they keep the chair beneath a tree in their backyard.  Since it’s upholstered in Sunbrella fabric and made from the same type of qood used on boats, it’s very weather-resistant. 

Brittany finishes up the power washing, and you can see it looks as good as new!  To test just what the furniture could withstand, they even dunked one in the lake for two weeks!  You can see the video (which includes a guest appearance by Tucker) here on their Facebook page. For durable indoor furniture, you could use Sunbrella fabrics – or you could consider leather.  Lee has a wonderful leather factory with so many great hides to choose from. Take a look at some of the pieces that we saw going through the factory.  An ottoman with a unique nailhead design features a natural hide.  A lounge chair (which is the same style that the Coley’s selected for their living room) is shown here in a bright orange leather.  Leather can have so many different characteristics depending on how it is treated.  It can be made to look more solid and stay the same over time, or it can show more character like the leather on the green sofa.  It was exciting to see some of our pieces like this one (which is headed for a lounge/playroom for teenage girls). 

The purple zebra chaise Hilaire featured in her first post is headed to the same house (but for one of the girl’s bedrooms). I was facinated by the process and the technology that is used today.  Because leather hides feature scars or insect bites that may be undesirable, these areas are marked in white.  A machine scans the hides and cuts out the pieces, avoiding the marked areas.  These aren’t wasted though.  Lee is committed to being an eco-friendly company and unusable portions of the hides are made into wallets, purses, and shoes.Where To Buy Cradle Bedding I loved the chair on the left – it was so comfortable to sit in!  What Is The Best Cat Breed For Catching MicePart of the leather factory is dedicated to using rugs for upholstery, which works great on benches, stools, and ottomans, like the one above.  How To Inject Hgh For Fat Loss

In the last picture, a talented upholsterer makes a tufted leather ottoman.I’m looking forward to recieving my own leather chair from Lee in just a few weeks.  I’ll be sure to post pictures when it arrives!  As for the rest of the upholstery and fabric factories, you can look forward to Brittany’s post which will hit the blog soon! Click your state for more features, events, specials + local business listings. Click your province for more features, events, specials + local business listings. You need to login or register to bookmark/favorite this content. Add to Style File Style Files are collections of articles and products you love from the REstyleSOURCE website. Save your favorite things so you can find them later! View your Style Files → To change your location, please sign up for REstyleSOURCE — it's free and only takes a second! Discover the BEST shops, designers and lifestyle businesses in your neighborhood. Be inspired and find products locally.

Connect with your community and be rewarded for supporting local businesses!What makes a sofa “the best?” Much has already been written about it. You’ll hear phrases being thrown around like And then there are the seat cushions.Loose Back [they’re both good] And then there’s style. Maybe it’s the style that makes it the best sofa. Well, the latter is definitely massed-produced. However, the difference between the 10k and 2k usually has a lot to do with the name more than what’s inside it. This is true for a lot of things we buy. I can’t tell you how many sofas and chairs I’ve sold in my career. All I know is that it’s hundreds. Most people buy maybe at most a dozen sofas in their entire lifetime, and some only one or two. The sofa is the most expensive piece of upholstered furniture in the living room and it’s also the largest, of course. Therefore, careful consideration should be paid, but please don’t drive yourself crazy. Quite frankly, if you stick to the manufacturers with good reps and quality, they’re all pretty nice.

What room is it for? Is it for watching TV and lounging? Will people be eating on it? Or is it for a more formal space like the “dead room” that no one ever goes into, but you want it to look nice because you pass by it all the time? Or maybe it’s the main living space that includes a TV and more formal entertaining. What dimensions do you need? Sofas generally come in lengths between about 60″ and 90″. The most common size is a three-seat sofa which is usually +/- 84″. However, and this is a really important point. If the sofa is being used primarily for conversation and relaxing, there will never be more than two people on it, so it is vitally important to get a sofa that’s the right length.Sofas generally come in depths from 34″-43.” The latter is like a stretch limo. You need a BIG room for one of those babies. They also have a very deep seat.Well, the average seat depth of most sofas is from 22-24″ deep. However, I have had clients who want what I call a bed that is 25-26″ deep.

It’s always the husband and he always has a wife who’s five feet tall. This is why God invented throw pillows. How tall should the back be? Again, this varies quite a bit. A modern sofa might only be a squat 28″ and these days, I’m seeing pieces with a back of 43.”  My favorite height for a traditional sofa is 34-35.” How high should the seat be? The average seat height is 18″-20.” Although there are styles that might have a seat as low as 15″ or as high as 21.” It’s a bit difficult to get an exact measurement because none of these are straight lines.Well, that’s a function of style, but for an average sofa, that’s usually from about 23″-25.” However, a Chesterfield style [the arms and back are the same height] could be as high as 36.” There’s another really important element to talk about when choosing the best sofa. If you don’t already know… It’s the part that the seat cushion sits on and includes the front of the sofa that the legs  attach to.

That needs to be nice and firm. Sofas with flabby decking will not be comfortable.That depends on the style and preference. One of my pet peeves is when someone calls a sofa with a skirt, “traditional.”  There is nothing at all traditional about a sofa with a skirt. If we are talking “traditional” we need to go back to the time of Louis XVI in France and that’s circa 1780 or below in England to the furniture maker Thomas Chippendale. These are “traditional” sofas This is what a traditional sofa looks like. I don’t see a skirt! This beauty is a Chippendale into a transitional Hepplewhite sofa. And that would be circa 1800. As a matter of fact, before that, there weren’t any sofas at all! People sat in chairs like this. No sofas usually, just the chairs. Many years ago, I went on a field trip with my son Cale to John Jay Homestead in Katonah.  This was the home of John Jay the first supreme court justice. Mr. Jay lived in this home in the late 1700’s.

Today, it is a faithfully preserved specimen of that era. There are two parlors in the home. Each is set up with two small tables and around each one are three chairs. And this was a wealthy dude!The preamble history lesson is for anyone who is interested. Everyone else can scroll down to the good stuff. As for seat cushions— 99% of the time, we use spring down seating. It is both soft and supportive and retains the shape of the cushion better than any other. I specify almost all of my upholstered furniture from three companies. The latter is one of those trade secrets that I’m not supposed to tell anyone about because they don’t show at High Point and they don’t have a website and they never will, I’ve been told fairly recently.It might be alright now… but…You’re telling us your sources?It’s not a secret. I mean, when you walk into your local Overpriced-R-us retail furniture store, don’t they usually have the manufacturer info on the label? These are all terrific companies with medium high-end prices and excellent quality.

Number 1 is well, the number one sofa which you can read about in the link. This one is by Lee Industries, although the one we did from CR Laine last year is very similar. This is known as a Bridgewater Sofa or an English roll arm sofa This is a sleek track arm sofa from Lee Industries TCS Designs makes my favorite settee. It is quite compact and yet just as comfortable as a full-sized sofa, so I’ve used it many times, when space is tight. This is a Tuxedo Arm sofa from Lee Industries which we did below for the Bronxville sun room with a skirt The Lawson arm sofa is probably the most common basic style. In the 80’s the arms were really BIG sometimes. This version from Lee is updated yet still classic. The so-called “traditional sofa” is usually a version of this arm with a 7″ skirt. A newer frame from CR Laine, the Huntley evokes a kind of Hollywood of the 1930’s-type glamor to me. This sofa from Lee is not only very beautiful, but feels totally luxurious and enveloping to sit in.