Seat Covers!!!

We have been working on getting our captain chairs recovered for many months -- I had posted about the beginning of the process to get them re-covered at the end of August in 2022: (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/08/monday-to-illinois.html)...

They were in pretty tough shape... the passenger seat was particularly bad - peeling at the headrest...

on both arm rests...

... on the front of the seat...

... on the other arm rest.

The driver's seat wasn't quite as bad... a little on the front...

... and on the arm rest...

... and on the head rest.

We had heard that Bauer Upholstery in Dubuque was the place to get them redone. We had stopped by there back in 2022 and picked out the fabric that we wanted (we wanted a darker color than what we had originally). Delays were not due to Bauer -- we were supposed to go back there in the fall of 2022, but Carl and I caught a bug and decided we would wait until we were back in the area in 2023. Then, this summer, we heard from Lisa Bauer that they were going to be at the International Rally, so we decided to get them installed during the week of the rally...

We had seen them set up on the grounds...

... they had brought their materials to be able to do the installs...

... working on the furniture out in the sun...

... maybe we're not supposed to be taking pictures?!?!?

We were just waiting for their call when they would be coming to pick up the chairs. Lisa contacted me on Thursday morning and let me know that they were ready to take our chairs... so Carl drove back to the campground and met them at Gracie...

They removed the chairs...

... they, of course, knew exactly how to do it...

... put the chairs on their truck to take back to their work area...

They also took apart our seat bases and replaced the bushings on the swivel mechanism -- he said ours were pretty much shot...

... this will make our seats revolve (turn from facing front when we're driving to facing backward when we are stopped and want more seating) more easily.

"Honey, someone took our chairs!"

Just a few hours later, Lisa called again and said that they were done! This time, I met them at Gracie and they came in to install our newly covered captain's chairs!

Driver's seat

Passenger seat

They look so nice! We are so glad to have this completed!!!

One of the RV renovation sessions that I went to explained why so much of the RV furniture is experiencing this peeling epidemic -- RV manufacturers had been using Ultraleather and it was a good product, but expensive. A cheaper product was brought in by Chinese fabric manufacturers -- supposedly with test results showing that it lasted as well as Ultraleather -- and all the major manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon. However, within a few years, it was seen not to last well -- the word from the fabric manufacturer was: "it was just a bad batch, we've got it fixed" -- well, it wasn't just a bad batch, it was a bad product. In the meantime, Ultraleather came out with a product to compete with the Chinese product, UF2, which some RV manufacturers switched to, but it also peeled. Ultraleather does not peel, and RV manufacturers have gone back to it, but there were multiple years (2010(?)-2018) when the furniture was covered with a fabric that would peel -- if it isn't peeling yet, it will be peeling eventually.

Flexsteel was the manufacturer of a lot of RV furniture -- even though they were just producing what the RV companies contracted them to do, they got the reputation of providing a poor product for RVs and eventually went out of production of RV furniture altogether. One of their employees, Lisa Bauer, with an entrepreneurial spirit, acquired the patterns for the covers and now has a great business covering these pieces of RV furniture with Ultraleather coverings (https://bauerrvupholstery.com/about/).