How Do You Repair Furniture that Has Been Damaged by Pets?

Whatever furniture you have in your home – leather, wood, plastic, or upholstered – your lovable but mischievous pets might somehow damage your furniture. Cats and dogs are most notorious for furniture damage. Damage can range from scratched surfaces to deep chewing cuts.  It really won’t matter what pet you have causes the furniture damage, unless you try to convince others that it’s your pet goldfish doing the damage. How do you repair damaged furniture caused by pets? Actually it’s not that difficult to make repairs at home so long as you monitor damages to its minimum.

For wood furniture, always have good wood fillers handy and in adequate amounts in the home. The semi-liquid wood fillers can be used to shape and mold any holes or chewed off portions. Before doing any repairs, clean out the damaged portions of the furniture carefully. Since most cats and dogs either scratch or chew in an uneven way, you need to use a scratch pad or wood awl to smooth out the surface. You need to remove splintered wood. Create a small recess in the wood that is at least ¼ inch deep. Using thick sandpaper followed by thin sandpaper, scuff the area out to smoothen any jagged edges.

Remove and smoothen out pointed or sharp edges so that the wooden fillers or putty can stick properly to the furniture. If the wood damage is really deep, use putty of epoxy wood that is lighter in color than the actual furniture. Using the putty tool, press the epoxy into the wood recess created. If the damage is only slight or on the surface only, use the wood filler in a squeeze tube. Use this to fill up the damage quickly; work fast because fillers harden quickly after two minutes. When this hardens it will be impossible to reshape or even refill.

Cover all edges and blend the filler carefully into these edges for a smooth surface. Be sure to fill in any gaps. Let the filler or putty dry out for about 20 to 30 minutes. Once it becomes solid, use sandpaper to further smoothen in out. The objective of the repair is to make sure that no one can tell the actual wood from the actual repair. After finishing sanding, wipe off with a cloth any dust particles left from sanding. Based on the actual color of your furniture or just using plain varnish if there’s no color, you can now paint or varnish over the repair so it blends in with the original color or varnish. If your furniture requires wood polish, use the same polish and brand to cover up the repairs.