Upholstery in
Doncaster

Doncaster is where we see the clearest version of something true across Manningham: people bought quality in the first place, so repair makes sense. A European-made leather lounge that has been in the family since the 90s, a solid timber dining suite, a well-built recliner. The frames on these pieces are usually as good as the day they were made. What wears is the foam, the webbing and the cover, and those are exactly the things we replace.

The suburb has changed shape in the last fifteen years. The established homes on the hill still send us big family lounges and dining suites, and the apartments and townhouses around Doncaster Hill and Westfield now send us a different kind of job: furniture that has to earn its place in a smaller room. Recovering a loved piece in a lighter fabric, making a slipcover, or building an ottoman or bed head to the exact wall are all common Doncaster jobs now.

The peeling lounge. A lot of what was sold as leather in the 2000s was bonded or PU leather, and it flakes. The frame underneath is often good. We strip it and recover in real leather, a fabric, or Austex commercial-grade vinyl, which is wipeable, hard-wearing and costs about the same per metre as entry-level leather. Because leather is sold by the whole hide and vinyl by the metre, vinyl is often the sensible answer for a small repair or a single seat.

The dining suite with loose chairs. Joints re-glued, corner blocks replaced where needed, seats rebuilt with new foam and recovered, with drop-in seats often back within a day or two.

The commercial side. In neighbouring Bulleen we rebuilt and recovered seating for the Veneto Club, and the same booth and banquette work goes into cafes and clubs across Manningham.

The first thing we ask a Doncaster apartment customer is about the building: lift size, loading dock, and whether the body corporate wants a booking. We plan the pickup around it, with the right gear and an extra pair of hands, so a three-seater goes down in one piece and nobody's hallway gets marked.

In the older houses on the hill it is the opposite problem. The lounge is enormous, the frame is superb, and it has not been touched in twenty-five years. Foam compressed, springs tired, cover faded on the window side. That is a straightforward rebuild for us, and the result is a lounge that sits the way it did when it was new, in a fabric chosen for the room it is going back into.

For family rooms we recommend a fabric rated at least 25,000 Martindale rubs, more with large dogs, and we will say so before you choose. There is a longer explanation in our pet-friendly and kid-proof fabric guide.

Frames are repaired and re-glued before anything else. Springs are nine-way hand-tied where the frame was built for them, or the seat is re-webbed where that suits the piece. Foam is Dunlop HR35, 200 density for seats and 165 where you want it softer, with Dunlop's ten-year warranty behind it. Covers are cut and sewn in-house by a machinist with thirty years at the bench, and show-wood is French polished by a restorer with fifty. Hardwood frames we build carry a thirty-year guarantee, and we are fully insured.

Drop-in dining seats can be the same or next day with notice. A sofa is about a couple of weeks once the fabric has arrived.