Trivia: Roseanne's three ex-husbands have appeared or worked on the show during its run. Her first husband, Bill Pentland, wrote a few episodes for the show and played Dan's friend, Freddy, in a season one episode. Tom Arnold, her second husband, played Arnie and was an executive producer. Finally, her third husband, Ben Thomas, had a cameo as a police officer who pulled her and Jackie over in an episode later in the show's run.
Trivia: Shelley Winters plays Estelle Parsons' mother in the series, even though in real life she's only seven years older than Parsons.
Trivia: In the Season 7 episode, "White Men Can't Kiss," D.J. refuses to kiss a student named Geena Williams in a school play because she is black. In Season 10, it's revealed that D.J. is married to that same girl.
Trivia: The show's ninth and original final season received a great deal of backlash due to its differences from prior seasons, plot-twists and the revelation that Dan had died of a heart attack during the finale. When the series was revived in 2018 for a tenth season, it was revealed that outside of a few cheeky inside-jokes, the ninth season was going to be largely ignored and was no longer considered canonical, and that the entire original cast (including Dan) was set to return. (Whew!).
Answer: Clearly, the only person who could truly answer this question would be a set designer for the series, or someone else directly connected to the series who would have this kind of detailed information. I looked on IMDb.com and Cheryl Lanner is credited as set designer through 1997. I quickly found her Facebook page, and I directed your question to her. After some time, Ms. Lanner has replied as follows: "I decorated the last season 1/2 but after 9 seasons the sofa just plain got worn out and had to be repaired from 8 years of usage. There was a board put on the sofa but as I've said, it was due to so much usage. If they had back problems I was unaware of them, but you can be assured that if that was the problem it would have been fixed immediately. Take care Michael!"
Michael Albert