We've owned this giant leather easy chair for longer than I can remember. And it's seen all kinds of use. It's technically been Dad's chair, but it's also the go-to whenever anyone's extra tired, or not feeling well, or wants to cuddle up with a blanket on a cold mountain day.
Well, all its use was really starting to show in 2016.
It was starting to be in pretty rough shape... But just in the one spot on the headrest. And it's over 15 years old. So I offered to try my hand at recovering the headrest portion to extend the life of the chair a bit. Plus I had bought a piece of suade leather not long before the tear appeared, which happened to almost perfectly match the rest of the very aged leather.
So the next step was figuring out how to attach the new piece to the chair. I've definately never recovered furnature before, but as I was only hoping to extend the life of the chair, and in our own home. So after a little consideration, I chose to use plain old hot glue.
The top was the easiest to attach, and looked clean and fantastic easily. But the sides took quite a bit more manipulating to move the folds where they need to be to keep the front (visible) portion smooth.
Once the folds were glued, they got stiffer than I wanted; but with more manipulation it did lay flat and stay attached.
All in all, it turned out pretty well in the end! I was very impressed how well the cover piece blended with the leather tone of the whole (very aged) chair, in spite of looking somewhat darker initially. And though it felt a little questionable to use hot glue on a much-used furnature piece and hope it would hold, there have been no problems at all. So completely a success in my book!
-- Update --
The chair has been going strong since this fix (5 years!). I'm actually really impressed it's held up so well; no signs of wear or pulling away from the glue in that area at all.
(my furry leather inspector and tenderizer...
So glad to have professional help.)
But the arm rests were looking a little sad by this point, in 2021, with padding starting to poke through the leather where hands usually rest, and just needing to be helped a little. So we decided, since the first recover worked so well, we'd do the same for the armrests.
Sadly, the leather for the armrests ended up being a slightly different color overall, but blended enough that we chose to go with it.
After covering the arms (which was much more difficult than the headrest), the new color was still just standing out a little too much for my liking.
So I made some of the same leather into cord piping, and ran that alongside the existing piping on the front of the armrests; it wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, but it worked out in the end. And definately helped tie the whole thing together so I didn't mind the color switch.
