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copyright ©1999-2007 |
furniture
facelift: 70s
lounge chairs part
two (vinyl chair repairs) by
Yee-Fan Sun | 1 2 3 4
.continued from page 1
As it turns out, you can indeed buy specialized kits to repair vinyl and leather upholstery. The most common is one of those oh-so-sophisticated As-Seen-on-TV products, and runs about $15 or so. They’re most commonly found in stores that sell auto accessories and supplies; I ended up finding mine in the auto section of my local Canadian Tire. What that $15 gets you are a bunch of little tubs of goo in a rainbow of basic colors, a spatula and tub for mixing colors, a little packet containing texturing papers and backing material, a metal-tipped heating tool, and a set of instructions. It’s not the most high-tech looking system in the world, but if I were to believe the before-and-after shots on the box cover, I could make my vinyl cracks and tears look good as new – in just minutes! Dutifully, I read through the instructions all the way through before starting. The basic technique looked fairly simple. Before beginning, the first step was to plug in my regular old home iron. While waiting for the iron to heat up, I was to mix up a color to match my upholstery, shove a little bit of backing material behind the fabric tear, and apply a thin, smooth layer of the mixed goo over the tear and backing fabric. The next step was to choose the texturing paper that most closely matched my own upholstery, slap it texture-side down over my gooed-up tear, and tape the paper in place with masking tape. Once that was set-up, it would be time to fire up the metal tool, by holding it against the hot iron for 3-4 minutes or so. With the tool ready to go, the final step would be to rub it in a circular motion over the part of the texturing paper that covered the tear, for about 30 seconds. According to the directions, once the paper had been left to completely cool down, I could then remove it and find a beautifully cured repair, that might or might not need a repeat of the process to cover up small spots that were missed the first time around. keep on moving: this way for more ---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home. |