Firm makes old leather furniture look like new

Household pets love leather furniture, but you don’t have to live with cat scratches or dog bites anymore.

The Leather Restoration Co. can not only remove pets’ calling cards, but also dye the furniture.

”We can take the worst piece and make it look new again,” says Harris L. Lansky, founder and owner of LRC Services in Miami Shores. “Used to be that if you bought a $2,000 leather chair and got a spot of ink on it, it would take a couple of years for the ink to fade. Not anymore.”

Lansky had been in the furniture business 40 years, mostly as a manufacturer’s representative and consultant, when he discovered a company in New York that restored leather furniture. He thought there would be a good market for such a company in South Florida.

Since launching his business in 1999, Lansky has done work for major law firms such as Holland & Knight and Greenberg Traurig. He says leather furniture gets such a workout there that the companies budget for maintenance. For one firm, he has changed the color on 75 chairs. Lansky’s corporate clients include John Hancock Insurance and American Airlines, while he counts The Shore Club, JW Marriott and Houston’s Restaurants among his hospitality clients. Every three months he renovates the 27 leather-clad elevators in the Wachovia Financial Center in downtown Miami.

In 2004 he expanded his company to include residential, where homeowners have tried to camouflage pet damage to expensive leather furniture without great success.

”The more cleaning people do [to leather furniture], the worse the piece looks,” Lansky says. “People use all sorts of cleaners that don’t do the job. You should use only soap and water on leather.”

Not only can Lansky’s staff remove pet damage, but they can replace an arm of a sofa or chair if necessary. And, for a homeowner who tires of the color of a piece, a dull black leather sofa can enjoy new life as a red, green or purple one.

”We have dyed a black sofa beige though it’s harder to go from dark to light,” Lansky says. As his website claims, the new color does not come off on clothing. “The color is applied exactly the same way it was applied originally by the tanner. We have restored and changed the color of thousands of pieces over the past 10 years without ever having the color come off on clothing.”

Lansky, who uses water-based products, offers free estimates to residential customers. He charges an average of $800 to renovate a three-cushion sofa and $300 to $400 for a club chair. Restoration includes repair of scratches, stain removal and the application of new color and topcoat.

Restoring leather makes dollar sense, Lansky maintains. “Restoration could represent a 60 to 80 percent savings over replacement and 40 to 70 percent savings over re-upholstering.”

Information from: www.miamiherald.com