Repairing leather

pacbowl

I have a leather dining booth in my kitchen. It looks like one of those corner booths you find in a lot of restaurants, L-shaped, table in the middle, that kind of thing. My old roommate had a cat that used the corners as a scratching post. It didn't do a lot of damage like tear out the padding or anything, but did leave the areas a bit roughed up with claw holes/marks. They are actually very hard to see unless you get really close but you can really feel it when running your hand over it. It's only on 2 of the corners so I really don't want to have reupholster the whole thing. Does anyone know of a way to "smooth" out the roughness and get rid of the tiny claw holes?

matt has a problem

You won't really be able to get rid of the holes, but you can lightly sand the leather with a very fine grit sandpaper to smooth the roughness, then use a matching color leather or shoe polish to restore the surface. There are leather and vinyl "repair" kits that usually consist of some type of colored filler, they get advertised on TV occasionally and you can find them in fabric departments in stores like Wal-Mart. Their effectiveness varies though.