Hi all, I’m looking for your thoughts on leather and vinyl repair kits.
I need to repair a badly damaged leather Chesterfield sofa and a vinyl chair, but I want to start with the chair first (pictured) to get a feel for the process and make my inevitable mistakes.
I’ve been considering kits from the Furniture Clinic, Wakeson, and the Scratch Doctor, but if you have other suggestions please let me know.
My main priorities are:
Flexibility: I’m repairing both leather and vinyl, and the damage is varied and extensive (especially the sofa), so it needs to be able to fix all types of damage on both materials, not just surface painting. Luckily they’re a similar medium brown, although the chair is a much warmer tone than the sofa.
Ease of colour mixing/matching: I’m not a painter! So I need it to come with a colour mixing guide that explains it like I’m 5. This is probably what I’m finding most difficult to determine from the product pages alone and would appreciate any insight into particular products you’ve used.
Affordable! Some of these kits cost more than the furniture itself. But I don’t know whether the difference in price actually reflects in the quality of the kits, and whether cheaper kits are a false economy that will only make things look worse.
A nice bonus would be a long shelf life, so that if there’s damage in future, I don’t have to shell out all over again.
Open to any thoughts on these products, other products, or anything else I’ve missed, and would love to hear your experiences with leather/vinyl repair in general. Thanks
Is your sewing skills in a place where you’d consider making a chair cover instead? The leather is totally worth repairing but I’ve often found vinyl cracking like that is a sign it’s on the way out and if you fix one area, another will soon develop holes (sort of like darning something threadbare, still works but might be setting you up for a sisyphean task)
Oh and don’t forget to condition the leather afterwards too! (I adore Fiebing Snowproof but on furniture that’s either a terrible idea or genius spillproofing and I don’t know which)
Thanks Ember, I know what you mean and have seen this in vinyl too, but in this case it’s mechanical damage caused during a house move - it’s got a good few years left in it. I’m planning to resell it once repaired, and the rest is in very good condition, so a chair cover isn’t something I’d consider for this one. But it’s a good idea and definitely something I’m hoping to do for a different chair!
I’d not heard of Fiebing and will definitely give it a go. I’m still learning about all the different ways to condition leather, and testing out a few products. Haven’t found my holy grail yet. I’m guessing you normally use the Fiebing for jackets and shoes?
Ah, that makes sense!
Yeah, I use it to condition my boots usually (figured if it’s good enough for snow it’s good enough for rain) and it makes things proper waterproof. There’s a bunch of brands of similar stuff if that one’s hard to find, but I can personally vouch i spilt a cuppa on my boots once and it slid off instantly haha
