How to cut a sofa apart to fit it through a door

Let me start by refreshing your memory. I styled our new sectional in our living room. I knew it wasn’t going to stay in there but I wanted to see what it would look like and second I wanted to buy myself some time to figure out how to get it into our basement family room/man-cave. The width fit through the stairs, not around the corner, and also not through the door frame. It took me about two weeks with the couch in the garage to gather enough information to make a decision on how to cut a sofa apart to fit it through a door.

So let me explain what we did.

How to cut a sofa apart to fit it through a door

If you have the money

Hire a professional.

I had once seen on TV how it was common in New York to hire a professional to take sofas apart to get them through doorways, narrow hallways, and small apartment building staircases and elevators. There are several companies that specialize in just that but I found only one that also travels to the surrounding states for customers in need. It’s the NY Couch Doctor and I contacted him to see what the costs would be for my three corner pieces. The two middle sections fit perfectly and I was able to even carry them down myself.

I was told that the costs were roughly $350 for travel time and between $250-$400 per piece depending on the amount of disassembly required. So this could cost us anywhere between $1000-$1550 or more to get the pieces into the basement.
The NY Couch Doctor appears to do amazing work and can certainly be a huge help to people who can afford to hire him. We didn’t fall into that category.

If you don’t have a budget

Do the work yourself!

After all that investigating I went back into the garage to look at the sectional pieces knowing that I had only one option left before giving up and that was trying to tackle taking the pieces apart myself.

If you’ve been following me for a while then you know I’m not entirely new to upholstery. I upholstered a button-tufted chaise, made a DIY upholstered headboard with brass nailhead trim, and upholstered chairs. Even though I have a little experience this was a scary thought, to say the least. It’s a brand new expensive piece of upholstery after all.

I kept playing it in my head over and over again about what I would and could do and one morning just had enough, went into the garage, and started the project.

List of tools and materials

• pliers
• staple remover
• rubber mallet
• circular saw
• hammer
• wood screws of different lengths
• metal connector plates/tie plates (also in various sizes)
• liquid nails
• staples
• staple gun
• power drill
• shop vac

Step-by-step instructions

I decided to peel the fabric from the bottom up and then cut the bottom half of the pieces off. So I turned the sofa upside-down, removed the feet, and then all the staples on the bottom.

I think most of the professionals actually cut the sofa in half in the middle. I decided to do it differently since the upholstery would be easier for me to fix that way.

Then I removed the upholstery nails and staples of the arm piece halfway up the sofa. I had to be careful with the upholstery nails because I wanted to reuse them again.

The blue tape in the above photo is a visual to know how far you will have to peel the upholstery strip up.

In the below photo you can see exactly how far I was able to peel the fabric and batting up to reveal the plywood construction. It’s literally like pulling up pants from the bottom.

I then marked the cut all the way around the bottom as you can see. Make sure you measure more than once to ensure that the larger piece will fit through your door frame.

Here is a better view of the marked line for the cut.

Take photos along the way so you can reference them later when putting the sofa pieces back together. Also numbered the pieces since I had several individual sectional pieces.

My husband helped me remove lots of staples with the pliers and staple remover (HERE).

We laid out a tarp in our driveway and placed the pieces on it with a shop vac close by to vacuum up all the dirt immediately after sawing.

My husband took our circular saw and cut off the perimeter of the bottom of the couch that I had marked.

We also covered the fabric with a drop cloth so it wouldn’t get dirty or destroyed.

Here is a closer view of the cut:

Then we carried the pieces into the basement and I went to work by myself to put them back together while my husband cut the other sectional pieces.

The sofa is still turned upside down during reassembly.
I used liquid nails to glue them back on and a lot of the metal connector plates/tie plates screwed to the plywood seams with the short wood screws to reinforce the connections and make sure it wouldn’t all fall apart during heavy family usage {update: the sofa is still holding up strong several years later}

The plates really work well to keep the cut pieces together and ensure a strong bond.

Inside view of the sofa cuts and connections:

After that, I peeled the batting and fabric back over the plywood seams and stapled everything back to the bottom of the sectional pieces. This is where the photos come in handy that I took during disassembly. They are crucial to be able to put the pieces back together in the way they were originally.

For me, it was making sure the batting and fabric were stretched tight again and the upholstery strip and nails were in the right place again.

VOILA! The pieces made it to the basement man-cave and you can’t even tell what we did.

We do both have to admit that we are proud of the work we have done. Altogether it cost us about $60 in supplies versus the almost $1600 dollars for the NY Couch Doctor.
It really does pay of to be a little risky sometimes, doesn’t it?

RELATED: 10 of my favorite neutral sofas to go with any home decor.

If you are new around here then you can see some more photos of the man-cave.

So that’s the story of how we got the sectional into our basement and I hope I can help someone with this.