Upholstery repair

docj · June 6, 2018

I'm sure all RVer's, from time to time, end up with damage to our upholstered furniture. Whether it is from wear-and-tear, pets, or accidents it's inevitable that "stuff happens" and one day you realize that your comfy recliner has a hole in its upholstery. That's what recently happened to us when I discovered a small hole and substantial wear on the bottom edge of the leather armrest of our Stressless recliner.

Given the price of a Stressless, replacing it was out of the question, so I began looking for a shop that could repair it. You would think that down here in south TX there would be lots of people who work with leather and could repair it. Sure, if you want leather saddlebags for your bike, a saddle, or a holster you're in luck, but finding someone to repair leather upholstery didn't seem promising unless I wanted to leave Corpus Christi and go to one of the bigger TX cities.

That's when I discovered Fibrenew (that's not a typo, it's a Canadian company) a franchise affair based out of Calgary. The pleasant young local franchisee came to my home with an impressive array of equipment not the least of which was a computerized color analyzer which provided him an amazingly good match to the chair's rusty brown leather. He then proceeded to repair the hole with what he explained were vinyl compounds that would adhere to the leather which he then covered with the dye mixture. The whole repair took less than an hour and I was very impressed with the closeness of the color match. I've posted before and after photos of the repair but I don't think they do it justice.

Anyway, I figured that since this is a franchised operation any of us needing this type of service might be in the vicinity of one of their franchisees so it was worth posting for the group. I can't vouch for the skill level and pleasant manner of all the Fibrenew franchise operators but this one, Robert Ickes, in Corpus Christi, is a young businessman who understands how to tailor a business strategy to meet his customers' needs. He was explaining to me that he had learned how to do upholstery because sometimes customers have furniture too damaged to simply be repaired so he's learned how to take hides and use them to replace damaged sections of upholstered pieces. I was very impressed.

PS I have no financial ties to this business; I simply was impressed by the person and the quality of the $150 repair.

fly2low · June 7, 2018

thanks for the info and sharing

docj · June 7, 2018

I noticed that my post didn't make it clear that the repair technique works equally well on vinyl in addition to leather. Robert told me that he get work orders from McDonald's all over town to repair damaged vinyl seating surfaces. He even repairs damaged vinyl flooring.