E & L A1 Upholstery

While this place does good work at reasonable prices, if things go wrong, they do not take any responsibility. No proper business ethics whatsoever. I took 8 matching chairs to be reupholstered and got Ernie to take measurements for the fabric. He had told me I needed 32 yards of trim.
I went and got 35 yards of trim that was a special order. At the shop, Ernie himself measured and said it would be sufficient.
2 weeks later, he called me to tell me that they got 7 chairs done but there wasn’t enough trim for the last chair. Because it was a special order trim, it became a nightmare to get the last chair completed.
Suddenly, the blame falls on me, the customer, because Ernie said it was my chair. He took no responsibility at all and it was my fault for buying the amount of fabric trim that he told me to get.
I would hesitate to recommend anyone to use his services.

We talked details once I decided to get my chair reupholster here although I wasn’t too sure what would look best, they ended up doing their thing and I couldn’t be more pleased. Unbelievably satisfied with the results. The price is far less than they deserve. I got a few quotes from places surrounding and this place beats their prices by about half, one place quoted me three times as much for the same work. Don’t waste ur time else where, this place doesn’t look fancy in fact it’s kind of a mess to say the least but they do great work for a fair price!

Ernie reupholstered our midcentury 9 foot sofa and 2 armchairs. His quote was reasonable compared to 3 other places I called, especially since they came and picked up the 9 foot couch & 2 arm chairs and delivered it back to us. I purchased the fabric from West Elm and mid-​century style peg legs from etsy. He was able to attach those for us and really customize the couches to our desired midcentury look. We are so unbelievably happy with the way the final product turned out. He also made pillow cases for us with the left-​over fabric. We have referred Ernie and his team to a few of our friends and will be calling him again for reupholstering more cool furniture finds! Thanks for helping us preserve a piece of our mid-​century home!

Very good work and open 7 days. I shopped for the fabric, Ernie told me how many yards to buy and they reupholstered my dining room chairs. Really happy with the work and they were very accommodating. I recommend them.

Customer service, pick up and delivery, beat promise time, great workmanship and great price. This is the holy grail of upholstry shops. We used to use a well known shop in OC and this place is far superior.

I’m so happy with my newly upholstered dining chairs! I texted a photo of the chairs, got a quote and dropped the chairs and fabric off at the store with an estimate of a week to 10 days to do the job. It took a week and the workmanship is excellent. I can’t recommend these guys highly enough — I found them to be very professional, careful and pleasant to deal with. Oh yes, and the price was fantastic.

Ernie has upholstered a few pieces for me, and they were successful, but he burned a bridge by not correcting a mistake. He reupholstered 2 large side chairs for me and did not ask if I would like new foam. So he threw away the existing foam inserts (that were soooo comfy) and filled the seat cushions with rock-​hard foam. My daughter was present when he delivered the chairs, and she paid him, so it wasn’t until I came home from work that I discovered the hard seat cushions. I called him immediately to ask if he could provide softer inserts, and he said yes. That was 4 weeks ago. I have texted and called, but I guess it’s more fun to give customer service to earn business than it is to correct an error. Too bad for him.

What a complete and utter shitshow.
I am standing in this shop right now utterly not suprised. Why? Because they have lost my chair and my bolt of fabric. Why am I not surprised you might ask?
I contacted the owner for a quote. I texted him an image of the project. I arranged a price. I arranged a hard deadline. I arranged a drop off time. I packed up four rocking chairs and drove them over. The workers at the shop told me they would only take one and that they needed to do a sample and that it would take 4 days. Ok, I said, got a receipt and left.
4 days later I called. Sample is not ready. I am ok with this but implore them «will they still be able to complete them by the deadline?» Yes, I am told. «It will be ready 3 days from now.» I call them 4 days later to check. It’s not ready… their seamstress was out sick… but they promise that the sample will be done in 2 days and if I can come in and approve then they can be completed over the weekend.
I’m skeptical but I tell myself that I should at least give them the benefit of the doubt. That… or enough rope to hang themselves.
I call on «the day». I say «hello, I’m the lady with the rocking chair sample that you said would be ready today after a week delay». The reply «Yes, it will be ready. We haven’t done it yet. But it will be ready by the end of today». I confirm their hours and show up.
So here I am. No rocking chair in sight. My fabric missing. Absolutely no work done. Owner is off site LOOKING for my property while I have plenty of time to write this lengthy Unilocal review.
…Owner scrambling, apologizing, saying «I am not Denny». I realize that sir, but you employ Denny and he is –apparently– worthless.
…I think the most amazing part is how out of their way they went to promise and assure me that the work was being done. It’s as if they don’t know how bad it will make them look when they don’t do a single solitary thing. That… or they just DGAF.
The owner implored me to give them another chance. Assuring me, «it’s an easy straightforward job, I can do all 4 tomorrow». But you could sort of tell that this wasnt the first time his employees fuck something up and that his apology was half-​assed and semi-​customary…
… You couldnt pay ME to stand here in this clusterfuck for one more instant. And I think you, dear reader, and I both should agree… that this place deserves no one’s business at all.

Ernie’s time did a fantastic job of matching the pattern and leveling out the seats of my vintage sofa without needing to re-​springing the whole thing.
I gave them the size, and I was told an accurate amount of fabric to buy. Pick up and delivery was included.
Yes they are busy, but they are busy because they are good and affordable.
The only reason I give them a 4 instead of a 5 is because I had to send it back to get the seats evened out, as they seemed to forget that was needed.

I got my replica Eames chair reupholstered here and although I am very satisfied with the upholstery work, the reassembly fell short. The screws were not set properly and required me to reassemble the chair after I got it home. That said, I did give them the chair in pieces and they basically had to put it back together from memory. Overall I’m satisfied but could pay more attention to detail with the hardware. I would bring more furniture in for upholstery but I would pay closer attention to their workmanship. Their price and wait time was very reasonable.

These guys are really great at what they do. Had my sofa re-​stuffed and they did it affordably and in a timely manner. I would highly recommend and I’ll be a returning customer.

I have a cheap ikea sofa that I wanted to spruce up by tufting the top cushions, I didn’t want the whole real deal tufting since it’s a $ 400 couch, just buttons on a string. I called around for quotes that averaged $ 60 PUR cushion ! What the heck! I finally found this company which did it for $ 40 total. On top of that they are quick and they came out wayyyyy better than expected. Also Dropped off the cushions at noon and picked them up at 5 same day. Will be coming here in the future.

I was just looking for upholstery classes when I came across this name again and knew I had to write a long overdue review. I found this shop about two years ago and had Jonathan reupholster 5 carved wood chairs for me. I call them my «lovely ladies.» I went with a chic animal print to update them and was really worried about the way they would turn out but these guys did a great job. I am considering them again for a sofa redo if I chicken out on doing the project myself. Oh, also, their prices are pretty good too!

Dining room set is from the 70’s with everyone still in good condition with the exception of the chairs. The fabric had worn down and the nail exposed. We were contemplating a new set or reupholstering what we had to save some money and time.
Ended up googling upholstery places and found this one thinking it was in Cypress CA and not Cypress ST. LA.
There is one in my area, LA Habra but they wanted $ 90 per chair without material fee and I didn’t want to spend that much money to reholpster dining room chairs.
Read all the Unilocal reviews and gave them a call. Ernie the owner saved me a visit by asking me to text him the picture of the chair and the size. He was able to tell me the price right away which was very convenient to me. He quoted me a reasonable price for each chair. Practically half off price in La Habra. We had a broken chair too and Ernie saw the picture and he said he had a friend who was a carpenter and that he could get it fixed for us. How convenient for me since I could not only get my chairs reupholstered but he could also fix my chairs. To errands put into one for a busy mom — he definetely deserves brownie points!
He suggested that I could go to find good choices of fabric at Michael Levine in LA. They did have a great selection and we ended up choosing sunbrella fabric since its made for rough conditions (outdoors) and won’t fade with sun and can withold the wear and tear from children.
We bought roughly 2.5 yards for 6 chairs but really needed 2 yards. I bought extra should we ever have an issue I could easily have replacement fabric.
When we decided to drop off the chairs to Ernie, we were surprised to find they didn’t want us to leave the chairs instead just took the seats out and told us to take the frames back home since they didn’t have storage space. This was a bit inconvenent because we basically just stored the chairs in our car till they were ready to put the seats back on so we would not have to keep taking them in and out of the house.
Ernie has a day time job so basically everytime I called I spoke with his workers. Sometime his son sometimes randomn workers and everytime we asked when the chairs were to be done we would get a different ETA. Finally asked for Ernie’s number and he was able to give me a firm date when the chairs would be done (one week due to the broken chair and having to wait for the carpenter to fix it) and we arranged a pickup date. So I would suggest speaking to him directly if possible.
Please anticipate he expects to be paid in cash. No argument from our side since we had saved $$ compared to the other place we looked at and especially because he did such a great job.
We were very pleased with the final job. He did an excellent job and for such a reasonable price. There was some miscommunication about taking back our extra material at the time of pickup and when I called Ernie a few days later he was so nice to mail us back our extra material at his own expense.
Such great customer service.
Overall — very happy and very pleased with his work!

Ernie and Jonathon were very helpful when we visited their store. Jonathon gave us the referrals for very good yardage stores in the Garment District of LA. They turned out to be very good places where we got the needed material.
We priced other shops in the area (Eagle Rock, Lincoln Heights, and NELA). This shop was the most competitively priced.
The quality of the work is very good and the owners & employees are geared to please the customer.
Highly recommended for other Unilocalers.

I can’t speak for the negative reviews but I honestly created a Unilocal account JUST to give E&L feedback (granted, I created the account like 2 years ago and am now just getting to it…).
After finding two chairs — beautiful frames, horrendous wear — at Goodwill for a steal (well duh, it’s Goodwill), they sat in my bedroom wrapped in plastic for weeks before I worked up the nerve to finally look into upholstery shops. After reading the positive reviews for E&L, my boyfriend and I decided to give it a try. We loaded the chairs, bought fabric from IKEA, and the rest is history.
From what I remember, getting a quote and setting up an appointment wasn’t too difficult. They were very patient with my questions and even cut open the original fabric while we were there to explain the process and show us the disintegrating padding. The finished chairs were GORGEOUS, with new foam and tufted buttons! The chairs did take a little longer than expected to finish, but that’s the only downside… about 2 weeks or so.
Will definitely be bringing any future upholstery projects back to them!

Super nice, super knowledgable and fantastic quality. These guys are super old school and it’s obvious they’ve been doing this a long time — Ernie literally made my cushions from scratch — foam and everything.
He was also open to making the cushions the way I wanted (as one long piece) but after talking with him more about the fabric, I actually ended up deferring to his judgement (2 pieces). SO happy I did. They made 5 cushions for a mid-​century modern day bed and love seat. I didn’t even have to bring them in. Just brought in the measurements and they helped me make decisions on foam, top pillow height, etc.
Was this the fastest turnaround? Probably not, but I knew that the end product was going to be great and it was. Totally worth the wait and wouldn’t have trusted anyone else. I’d recommend calling to see if Ernie or John are in the shop and talk to them yourself. The rest of their crew is very nice but will save you time to chat with them.

This is the reason I joined Unilocal.I found E & L A1 on Unilocal and the reviews were helpful. I contacted John and he gave me an outstanding quote (almost a third of other places) very quickly. I did not have a «deadline» on this project, but whenever I emailed John, he always replied very promptly with the progress and even photos of my project. End result; a beautiful (very eclectic and funky) settee which I can not wait to show off in my home. The craftsmanship is evident in the double piping and smooth, tight fabric covering (as I asked to eliminate tufting because I wanted to save the integrity of the fabric print, which can be challenging in curves). I would recommend E & L A1 Upholstery to anyone and will use them again! Thanks John!

This is my first five star rating EVER because Ernie is absolutely wonderful. You can tell that he takes such pride and care in his work.
My husband and I needed a sofa and two armchairs reupholstered and we went to the fabric district but being a newbie were quickly overwhelmed with all the different types of fabric. We decided to call Ernie and he was kind and patient enough to answer all our questions regarding fabric types for 15 minutes. If not for Ernie, we would have bought flimsy fabric the salesman was telling us to buy that would not have stood the test of time.
After Ernie picked up the sofa set and fabric for reupholstering, we were on tenterhooks for the whole week because we were nervous about the quality of his workmanship. We shouldn’t have worried! When Ernie dropped off our sofa set, we were so delighted… it was absolutely GORGEOUS!!! My husband and I sat on the sofa for 15 minutes just looking at each other because we were in awe with the detail and the quality, that’s how impressed we were.
Oh, did I mention that his quote was at least five hundred dollars lower than all the other upholstery stores? And that he picks up and drops off the furniture for free? I definitely recommend Ernie for all your upholstery needs. I know I’m coming back to him when I need to reupholster again!!!

Well, it took a lot of back and forth with Spoonflower, multiple strike offs and adapting to new color profiles mid stream but thanks to their great customer service, the result was perfect yardage! Now that i had the fabric, I really needed a professional hand to take on the task of doing the actuall upholstery. Enter Ernie and his son John of E & L A1 Upholstery. After reading the reviews and seeing images of their work on Unilocal,I was satisfied that I had found caring individuals who would provide the best hand at restoring my heirloom.
They did an amazing job and were incredibly reasonably priced providing both pick up and delivery with quick turn results! Ernie and John were extremely polite and helpful and I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for skilled artisans. I am jonesin’ to do more furniture and look forward to working with these gentlemen again soon! The only thing that could have made this sweeter was if my grandmother was here to see it…