How to Repair Damaged Furniture

Patch dining chair holes with Wood Filler by A Ray of Sunlight

Chewed up leg

When we bought these chairs, they had holes where leg braces used to be, as well as bite marks on some of the legs. Here's a super simple trick to repair damaged furniture.

To repair the damaged chairs we used:
Bondo
Straight Edge - I love the handles on these!
Sandpaper
Razor Blade Scraper - Not the exact one I used, but I prefer this style for this job.
Wood Filler

Using Bondo is pretty simple and quick. It's way faster than wood filler, especially when you are filling in deep holes and it drys a lot harder too! Unfortunately neither wood filler or Bondo take stain very well though. That's why the paint comes in after repairs! ;)

First I sanded around all of the holes and wiped all the dust off. Next I mixed up the Bondo and went to work filling in all the holes, bite marks and gouges with the plastic Bondo scraper.

How to repair animal bite marks with All purpose Bondo

Holes Filled with Bondo

Cut off excess Bondo before it hardens completely

http://www.arayofsunlight.com/2017/02/how-to-thin-paint-for-your-paint.html

It is best to use extra Bondo and make sure your holes are overfilled so you don't need to keep applying layers of Bondo. Once the bondo was set, but not hard (about 5-10 minutes) I used a utility knife to cut / scrape away the excess Bondo.

Without this step I would have been sanding for hours, because once the Bondo is completely hard and dry it gets hard to sand. After the Bondo was completely dry (overnight is good) I sanded everything smooth with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around my sanding block. There were a few small spots that didn't get completely filled with bondo. In those cases I just filled them in with wood filler because they were minor holes at that point.