The fun of upholstering

Some people like to just upholster over the exsisting material, I am not one of those people. I guess that would be the easy way to do it, but my curiousity gets the best of me and I want to see what is underneath. I want to know if this is the original material used on the items and if there is another material underneath. if your like me and you like old furniture and antiques, you like to take things back to the way they looked in their day. Another reason i like to strip all of the material off is to make sure that the foam or stuffing is clean. Recently I purchased a cool looking wooden love seat, the lady I bought it from said it had the original material on it and that all it need was for the foam and backing to be fixed. Well that was not the story, I not only uncovered an old material underneath, I uncovered 2 layers of old material and dirty dirty backing and foam. the loveseat was disgusting and dirty and needs all new upholstery and foam.
I have been working on it for two days and after millions of small nails and a dust mask I have only just begun to get the 3 layers of material off and clean it up. One thing about unearthing the original material is that it helps to give you ideas of what to use to recover it. Because my livingroom chairs are an off white pattern and i really hope to have white slip covers in the new house, I want this love seat to have a punch of colour. I am hoping that I can find a material that brings it too life and will also look good on cushions for the couch to bring it all together. Lets hope that the new house also has a livingroom to house all of my treasures, and gives me the look i am hoping for.
Because the upholstery and backing is so dirty and lets not forget the million little nails yet to be pulled, it is going to be a while before I can recover for sure. I want to keep the wood the colour that it is but I will have to wait and see how it looks after some clean up. Oh the joy of restoration .............