Wood Repair

Furniture repair NYC: a restorer brushing finish into the chipped corner of a walnut table
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Wood Frames, Joints, Tops & Finishes — NYC & New Jersey

A Loose Joint Is A Repair, Not A Replacement

Almost every sofa, chair and table in your home is built on a wooden frame. When that frame racks, when a top gets scratched or a finish goes cloudy, the piece is still sound. Our furniture repair NYC work fixes the wood and leaves the rest of the piece alone.

Send Photos For A Quote Call (347) 310-7483
Start Here

What Needs Attention?

Point at the one that looks like yours. Every furniture repair NYC job starts as one of these six.

  • Dining table top covered in fine white surface scratches Surface scratches
  • Chipped corner on a solid oak table edge with bare wood showing Chipped edges
  • Open gap where a dining chair back leg meets the seat rail Loose chair joints
  • Split running down the grain of a wooden furniture leg Split wood
  • Deep gouge torn out of a wooden table top Dents and gouges
  • Turned wooden leg with chunks knocked out of the beading Damaged legs

Photograph it the way these are shot — close, straight on, in daylight — and we can price it without seeing the piece.

Where It Goes Wrong

Wood Fails In Three Places

Joints, surfaces and finish. They fail for different reasons and they are repaired with different tools, so the first thing furniture repair NYC jobs need is a decision about which one you are actually looking at.

Close-up of a chair back leg meeting the seat rail
The Joint

Chairs rack because the glue in the mortise has gone brittle, not because the wood broke — timber keeps moving with the seasons and works the joint loose. It is knocked apart, cleaned back to bare wood and re-glued under clamps.

Warm brown wooden table top lit from one side
The Surface

Scratches, dents, ring marks and gouges. Shallow ones lift out with heat and abrasive; deep ones get filled, leveled and grained back in before any color goes near them.

Flat sample of warm brown wood grain
The Finish

Lacquer clouds, crazes and lifts as it ages. That is a coating failure sitting on top of perfectly good timber, and it is why refinishing beats replacing so often.

The Register

Six Faults We Repair

The six that come up most in furniture repair NYC inquiries, on dining chairs, tables, cabinets, bed frames and the hidden frames inside upholstered pieces.

  • 01StructuralBroken legs, split rails and racked frames. Re-glued, dowelled or spliced, then clamped until the joint carries load again.
  • 02SurfaceScratches and abrasion through the topcoat. Cut back, filled where needed and blended into the surrounding sheen.
  • 03ColorSun-bleached tops and mismatched repairs brought back to the original tone with tinted stain and toner.
  • 04RefinishingStripping a failed coating off the whole piece, then sanding, staining and sealing it from bare wood up. On anything with age we keep the original finish where conservation practice says to.
  • 05Dents & ChipsCrushed edges and missing corners rebuilt in filler or new timber, shaped to the original profile.
  • 06VeneerBubbled, lifted or missing veneer re-laid, or patched in with a matching leaf cut to the grain direction.
Before And After

Small Details. A Noticeable Difference.

None of these pieces were replaced. The damage was cut back, filled and color matched into the finish around it.

Scratched walnut coffee table top beside the same top refinished smooth BeforeAfter

Scratched walnut coffee table top

Chipped oak dining table corner beside the same corner rebuilt and blended BeforeAfter

Chipped oak dining table corner

Split wooden sofa leg beside the same leg glued, filled and refinished BeforeAfter

Split wooden sofa leg

Illustrative repair examples. Results depend on the wood, finish and damage.

What We Take On

From Dining Chairs To Your Favorite Leather Sofa

We repair the wood that makes your furniture special.

Brown leather sofa standing on a solid wooden frame and tapered legs

Sofas, chairs, tables, cabinets and more.

  • Slat-back wooden dining chair with a dark leather seat Dining chairs
  • Round walnut coffee table with books and a vase on top Coffee tables
  • Corner of a wooden cabinet door with an aged brass knob Cabinets
  • Wood-framed armchair with black leather cushions Wood-framed armchairs
Material First

A Repair Plan That Fits The Material

Material and finish affect the repair options.

  • Worn and scratched corner of a solid oak table Solid wood

    Can often be repaired, filled and refinished to blend with the original finish.

  • Corner of a dark walnut veneered table with a glossy surface Wood veneer

    Can be carefully repaired to restore appearance and prevent further damage.

  • Off-white painted cabinet corner with paint chipped away to bare wood Painted finishes

    Can be filled, repaired and color matched for a seamless result.

One Chair

A Racked Dining Chair, Start To Finish

The most ordinary furniture repair NYC job there is, in four moves.

Wooden chair frame stripped back with webbing exposed
01 Strip

Seat and cover come off so the frame can move. Old glue is scraped out of every socket.

Bare chair frame with clamps across the re-glued corner joints
02 Re-Glue

The frame is pulled square and clamped across the joints until the glue has fully cured.

Sample panel of brown wood finish
03 Match

Stain and toner are mixed against an unworn part of the chair, usually the inside of a leg.

Finished wooden desk with an even sheen
04 Finish

Sealed and rubbed to the sheen of the rest of the set, then the seat goes back on.

Long wooden table surrounded by upholstered chairs
One Visit

The Frame And The Cover Come Back Together

A dining chair with a wobbly leg usually has a tired seat as well. Because we do both, the wood and the upholstery are quoted and finished on the same job rather than handed between two trades. That means scratch repair, color restoration or full reupholstery can run alongside the frame work, and the finish on the wood is matched once everything else is done.

See Every Service
Starting Prices

What The Common Jobs Start At

Starting figures only. Every furniture repair NYC quote is set from photographs of the actual piece.

  • Wood Scratch Repair
    $195
    Starting from
  • Wood Crack Repair
    $250
    Starting from
  • Table Refinishing
    $525
    Starting from
  • Full Refinishing
    $650
    Starting from

What moves a quote: how many joints are loose, whether veneer is missing, and whether the piece can be worked on at home or has to come to the workshop.

Be Honest About It

When Replacing Is The Right Call

Four cases where furniture repair NYC money is better spent on a new piece.

  • Particleboard and MDF carcasses. Once the fixings pull out of a chipboard panel there is nothing left for glue or a screw to hold onto.
  • Rot and active woodworm. Soft, crumbling timber has lost its strength. Treatment is possible, but the affected member has to be replaced, not repaired.
  • Splits through a load-bearing leg. A leg that has split along the grain under load will usually split again. New timber is safer than a glue line.
  • Thin veneer already sanded through. Modern veneer can be under half a millimeter. If a previous refinish went through it, there is nothing to cut back into.

We say so before you spend anything. If a piece is not worth the work we tell you at the photo stage.

Questions

What People Ask First

Do you repair furniture at my home or take it away?
Surface work, color matching and most loose joints are done at your home. Full stripping and refinishing needs the workshop, because the solvents and the dust are not something you want indoors.
Can you match the finish on the rest of my set?
Yes. Stain and toner are mixed on the piece itself against an unworn area, then checked in daylight before anything is sealed. Matching one chair to five others is routine.
Is furniture repair NYC cheaper than buying new?
For solid wood, almost always. A structural repair and a refinish cost a fraction of a comparable new piece, and antique or built-to-order furniture usually cannot be replaced like for like at all.
My chair wobbles but nothing looks broken. What is wrong?
The glue in the joints has failed. It is the single most common fault we see, and it is a re-glue rather than a rebuild as long as the timber itself is sound.
Do you work on antiques?
Yes, and we keep the original finish wherever it can be saved. Stripping an antique destroys the patina that gives it value, so it is a last resort rather than a default.
Do you cover New Jersey as well as the boroughs?
Both. The five boroughs and northern New Jersey are all covered, including Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The full list is on the locations page.
Get A Quote

Send Photos For A Furniture Repair NYC Quote

One wide shot of the whole piece and one close-up of the fault is enough to price any furniture repair NYC job. Tell us the room it lives in and whether anything is loose.

Leather hides, upholstery fabric and a stripped wooden chair frame on a workshop bench
Next Step

Wood, Leather Or Both

Most furniture repair NYC inquiries start with a photograph. Tell us what the piece is and what has gone wrong with it. If the wood is beyond saving we will say so, and if it is a leather problem rather than a wood one we will point you at the right page.

Contact Us Call (347) 310-7483
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