Leather Seats Restoration

**Street_Chally73** · 03-10-2014, 04:41 AM

I figured that several others may be interested in possibly doing this in the future, so I wanted to put together a quick thread outlining what I did to make my newly-acquired leather seats to look even better than they did before.

I purchased all of my supplies through Furniture Clinic, USA (it's a British-based company). I used the medium leather colorant (colourant) kit, leather repair kit, and also purchased their cleaner and leather conditioning creme.

I began by using the leather prep solution and rather aggressively scuffed up the two areas where the original dyes had been worn away:

Once that was done, I followed it up with some alcohol cleaner and let it air-dry for about 12 hours to ensure that all remnants of both cleaners had time to fully evaporate from the leather surface. Now, came the fun part; masking up everything in preparation of the actual dying process! Once this was done, I hooked up the airbrush that they provide in their colourant kit and as per their instructions, made my first pass of colourant with a sponge applicator.

I hit that with a cheapo hair dryer that I bought just for this...I would highly recommend not using your g/f's for this, unless you enjoy getting into trouble, haha!! Once it had dried, I mixed up some more of the colourant and poured it into the airbrush's reservoir. The first couple passes I was paranoid about getting any runs, so I really kept my distance & gradually pulled it in closer (once I got the feel of the airbrush & its characteristics).

I believe I did quite a few coats to blend the damaged areas back in with the surrounding dye (probably close to like 8-10 thin coats), making sure to heat dry the colourant well between each coat. Now that the damages were blended back to how they needed to be, I then hit the entire section of leather with the polyurethane sealer...This stuff is extremely runny, so you really need to spray from a distance & do a balancing act with the hair dryer so that you can dry it quickly (before it begins to form any runs).

Once you have about 3-5 layers of the super seal on, the last & final step is to match the surrounding leather's finish. I made the error of going with a semi-gloss at first, so I needed to purchase some more bottles of matte & semi-matte sealant to get a nice match. Basically, I had conditioned my leather prior to purchasing the kit &, consequently, had ordered what I thought would match...Oh well! Now I just have that much more to do any touch-ups in the future.

Anyways, that's the gist of it and now here are the photos to highlight each process...Enjoy!

Before:
Driver's Side Front Seat - Before 001.jpg Driver's Side Front Seat - Before 002.jpg Driver's Side Front Seat - Before 004.jpg

During:
Driver's Side Front Seat - Before 005.jpg Driver's Side Front Seat - Before 008.jpg