Pet-Proofing Furniture: Comfort Works Leather Sofa Cover

Ryan and I decided to try and pet-proof our TV sofa using a leather sofa cover from Comfort Works – a supposedly Australian company that offers custom slipcovers for Ikea furniture.  This review was not sponsored, and I paid for the slipcover with my own money.

In my Tour of the Basement Rec Room, you may have noticed the shiny gleam of a black, leather-covered sofa.

It’s Ryan’s beloved bachelor sofa, the now-discontinued IKEA Kramfors, which was covered in a nubby gray woven fabric.  This rough texture apparently screamed to the cats “Scratch Me!” 

Before he and I moved into this borrowed abode, my cats had never, ever scratched furniture.

Kramfors Sofa Before: Nubby Gray Fabric Cover

That’s when we got a clue and filled the house with scratching toys. Bi-weekly nail trims, also known as cruel cat torture (just ask them), followed.  When that wasn’t enough, we also covered Ryan’s sofa with tin foil.

Funnily enough, Ryan and I were not content to live with a foil-covered sofa forever. 

Enter the Modena Black Leather Kramfors Cover from Comfort Works, which I ordered for Ryan as his Christmas gift.  At $400 after shipping, it wasn’t a cheap investment, but we saw it as a good practice run with leather before having the white sofa professionally reupholstered in leather or pleather.

The sofa cover arrived within 3 weeks, and the two of us easily put it on the sofa.  It required some tugging and squishing, but the end result was a pretty tight fit.    However, it would be tough to put on alone.

My only complaint about the product was that it was a little hard to get a perfect fit on the arms, and there were very obvious wrinkles in the leather.  The wrinkles are smoothing out after a few months, and the arm looseness seems to be disappearing, so I am guessing that it takes a little time and use to “break it in”, so to speak.

Bottom line?  We are glad we ordered a leather cover for the sofa, but are going to wait a while before investing in professional leather upholstery for the white sofa.

As for cats scratching:  It appears that they tried scratching it once, probably not realizing that it was a different material, because there is one set of tiny holes in the arm. (White specks in photo.)

 I was frustrated that the cover was already marred, but it’s actually less visible in person than in the photo.  For now I’m keeping an old towel over each arm when we’re not using the sofa, and if they do try to scratch the towel, it will slide right off the sofa.  So far the towels have not budged.

To train the cats not to scratch it ever again, I’m going to put scratching posts at either end of the sofa, then move them away over time.

In short, the Comfort Works Leather Slipcover pleased us, and seems to be a good solution for our four-pet household.  The lack of transparency and some questionable practices by the company, however, did not.  I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you about that.