Furniture Repair Service in St. Louis, MO
Gomez Upholstery repairs furniture structurally, not just cosmetically — broken and cracked frames, loose joints, worn springs, sagging webbing, failed tufting, torn seams, split zippers, and damaged vinyl. We also handle wood refinishing on furniture where the finish has failed but the piece is worth keeping. Our shop is located at 6487 Chippewa Street in St. Louis, with free estimates and pickup and delivery across the metro area.
Expert Furniture Repair in St. Louis, MO
When a piece of furniture starts showing its age — a wobbly dining chair, a sofa that sits lower on one side, a cracked frame — the instinct to replace it can feel overwhelming. But quality furniture deserves a second life. At Gomez Upholstery, we’ve spent over two decades providing residential and commercial furniture repair to families and businesses across the St. Louis metropolitan area, from the stately homes of the Central West End to the bustling restaurants along The Hill.
Whether you have a mid-century sofa that needs structural reinforcement or a dining set that’s loosened after thirty years of family holidays, our craftsmen bring genuine expertise to every repair. We combine traditional woodworking and upholstery methods with quality materials to deliver results that hold up for years — because repair is almost always the smarter, more sustainable, and more rewarding choice.
Why St. Louis Residents Choose Repair Over Replacement
Skilled furniture repair preserves the character, materials, and sentimental value of your pieces at a fraction of the cost of replacement. Today’s mass-produced furniture cannot match the solid hardwood frames, hand-tied springs, and dense padding found in well-made older pieces. By choosing professional repair, you’re keeping quality that modern retail no longer offers at any comparable price.
There’s a practical test we apply on every estimate: is the frame worth keeping? If the answer is yes — and with older furniture it usually is — repair almost always makes financial sense. If the answer is no, we’ll tell you that too, rather than take the job.
What to Expect From Our Furniture Repair Shop
Every piece that enters our St. Louis shop receives a thorough assessment to identify both visible damage and hidden structural weaknesses. We evaluate frame integrity, spring tension, padding density, fabric condition, and joint stability before developing a repair plan. We then walk you through your options clearly, provide a detailed estimate, and treat every piece — whether a $200 recliner or a $20,000 heirloom — with the same care.
Furniture Frame Repair and Joint Reinforcement
Diagnosing Structural Damage
Structural damage usually hides beneath the upholstery. Common signs include creaking, visible wobbling, uneven seating surfaces, or fabric pulling away from the frame. Our craftsmen carefully expose the full extent of the damage — cracked rails, split dowels, loosened mortise-and-tenon joints, compromised corner blocks — to build an accurate picture of what the piece actually needs.
Joint Reinforcement for Lasting Stability
Loose joints are the single most common issue we see. Over time, wood glue dries out, dowels shrink, and daily use gradually works connections apart. We use traditional woodworking methods — mortise-and-tenon joinery, dowel replacement, and hide or PVA glue depending on the piece — alongside modern reinforcement such as corner bracing where appropriate. Every joint is clamped and cured properly for maximum bond strength.
Frame Repair for Residential and Commercial Furniture
Whether you own a chair that’s been in the family since the sixties or a heavily used booth seat from a restaurant on Washington Avenue, our team has the skills to repair it. For residential work, we restore factory-level structural integrity. For commercial pieces, we prioritize durability and quick turnaround to minimize disruption to your business.
Working with an antique or heirloom piece? Period furniture needs a different approach — original joinery, era-appropriate materials, and repair decisions that protect appraisal value rather than just restoring function. See our antique furniture restoration services in St. Louis.
Spring Repair and Replacement
Signs Your Furniture Springs Need Attention
If you’re sinking too deep into your sofa, feeling metal through the cushion, or noticing one side sitting lower than the other, the springs likely need attention. Many homeowners assume the problem is cushion foam when the real cause sits deeper in the support system — which is why replacing cushions alone so often fails to fix the feel.
Coil, Sinuous, and Eight-Way Hand-Tied Systems
Different furniture uses different spring systems, and each requires specific knowledge. Sinuous springs, common in modern furniture, can be re-clipped or replaced efficiently. Coil springs may need retying or individual replacement. Eight-way hand-tied systems — the gold standard of upholstered seating — demand the highest level of craftsmanship. Our team works in all three.
Webbing and Support Replacement
Springs rely on jute webbing, synthetic strapping, or platform cloth to stay correctly positioned. When webbing stretches, tears, or detaches, springs shift out of alignment and comfort collapses. We inspect and replace worn webbing as part of every spring repair, so the whole support system works together rather than in isolation.
Wood Refinishing and Surface Restoration
Not every furniture problem is structural. Water rings, sun bleaching, pet scratches, cigarette burns, lifted veneer, and finishes that have gone cloudy or sticky are all fixable — and fixing them is usually far cheaper than the alternative.
Cleaning and Repair Before Stripping
We don’t strip a finish unless it’s genuinely necessary. A surprising amount of damage that looks terminal responds to careful cleaning, padding, and spot repair. Water rings often lift. Scratches can be filled and blended. Cloudy lacquer can frequently be revived rather than removed. Stripping is irreversible, so we treat it as the last option rather than the default.
Full Wood Refinishing
When a finish is genuinely beyond saving — badly weathered, extensively burned, or previously refinished poorly — we strip and refinish properly. We custom-mix stains and topcoats to match the original tone, whether that’s warm amber on an older walnut piece or a clean modern satin on mid-century teak. Furniture refinishing in St. Louis has to account for our humidity swings, so we cure properly rather than rushing the schedule.
Veneer and Detail Repair
Lifted, bubbled, and chipped veneer is common on older case goods and on anything that’s spent time in a damp basement. We re-glue, patch, and blend veneer repairs so they disappear into the surrounding surface.
Tufting, Button Repair, and Upholstery Detailing
Tufting is one of the most recognizable details in upholstered furniture, and one of the first to fail. Buttons pop off, threads break, and diamond patterns lose definition. We restore tufted surfaces by resetting buttons at the correct depth, re-threading with durable cord, and measuring existing spacing and pleat depth so the replicated pattern matches exactly.
We also handle the smaller repairs that don’t warrant a full reupholstery:
- Seam repair — restitching split and pulled seams before the opening spreads
- Zipper repair and replacement — cushion covers, bolsters, and slipcover closures
- Torn fabric repair — patching and blending where a full recover isn’t warranted
- Vinyl upholstery repair — color-matched patching on commercial and residential vinyl
- Leather repair — conditioning, color matching, and targeted repairs
During your consultation we’ll assess honestly and recommend the most cost-effective route. Sometimes that’s a forty-dollar zipper rather than a full recover, and we’d rather tell you that.
Foam and Cushion Work
Sagging cushions, foam you can feel the frame through, and cushions that have lost their shape are all fixable. We replace foam in a range of densities and firmness levels matched to how the piece is actually used.
Cushion and foam work is covered in full — including custom cushion construction, feather and down-blend fills, and replacement cushions built to fit — on our custom cushions and foam replacement page.
Commercial Furniture Repair in St. Louis
St. Louis restaurants, hotels, offices, healthcare facilities, and churches rely on Gomez Upholstery for volume repair work that doesn’t compromise on quality or turnaround. We repair and reupholster booths, banquettes, lobby seating, dining chairs, conference room chairs, church pews, and waiting area furniture — using commercial-grade materials rated for heavy daily use.
We schedule around your operating hours where possible, and we can work in phases so you’re never fully out of seating.
Furniture Maintenance and Preventative Care
Habits That Extend Furniture Life
Rotate cushions regularly to distribute wear. Vacuum upholstered surfaces weekly. Keep furniture out of direct sunlight, which fades fabric and dries out leather. Condition leather twice a year — especially important through St. Louis winters, when forced-air heat pulls moisture out of everything in the room.
How St. Louis Climate Affects Your Furniture
Our seasonal swings are hard on furniture in a way that’s easy to miss. Humid summers and cold, dry winters make wood expand and contract, which loosens joints and can crack frames over time. Leather dries and cracks in winter. Fabrics absorb moisture in August and can develop mildew in poorly ventilated rooms. Furniture stored in basements and garages — common here — takes the worst of it.
When to Schedule Professional Inspection and Repair
We recommend having your most-used pieces looked at every three to five years. Early intervention on slight wobbling, minor sagging, or a small tear prevents small problems from becoming structural ones, and it’s dramatically cheaper.
Serving Homeowners and Businesses Across St. Louis
Our shop is on Chippewa Street in south St. Louis. We repair furniture for clients throughout St. Louis City and County — Clayton, Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Chesterfield, Wildwood, Affton, and the south city neighborhoods around us — along with St. Charles County and Metro East communities including Belleville, Edwardsville, and O’Fallon.
Pickup and delivery is available across the metro. For structural repairs we generally need the whole piece rather than just cushions, so we’ll wrap and transport it, complete the work, and return it. See our full range of upholstery services.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most standard repairs are completed within one to two weeks. Complex work — extensive frame rebuilding, full refinishing, or repairs waiting on a custom fabric order — may take three to four weeks. We give you a clear timeline at the start and tell you promptly if anything changes it.
In most cases repair costs significantly less than a comparable new piece, and the comparison is usually better than it first appears. Older furniture was built with hardwood frames and construction methods that today would put a piece in a much higher price bracket. You’re keeping the expensive part and replacing the parts that wear out. We provide free estimates so you can compare honestly.
Yes — frame repair is core to what we do. Cracked rails, split legs, loose joints, failed corner blocks, and separated dowels are all repairable in the large majority of cases. We disassemble as far as needed, repair using methods consistent with the original construction, and clamp and cure properly. If a frame genuinely isn’t worth saving, we’ll tell you before you spend anything.
Yes. We handle wood refinishing, stain matching, water ring and scratch repair, and veneer repair. Many pieces need both structural and surface work, and having it done in one shop means the finish and the upholstery are coordinated rather than done in sequence by two different vendors.
Yes, across the St. Louis metropolitan area. We wrap and transport your furniture to our shop, complete the repair, and return it. There’s no need to arrange a truck or move heavy pieces yourself.