The question behind every repair quote is the same. Will I be able to see it? We give a straight answer before we start, and here it is for the surfaces we repair most on our stone benchtop, laminate and kitchen cabinet jobs in Sydney.
What makes a repair disappear
Three things have to match. The colour, the pattern and the sheen. Get one wrong and the repair shows. Get all three right and the eye slides over it.
Colour. We mix the colour on site, against the surface, not from a chart. A white benchtop is never the white on the sample. It has aged, it has been cleaned, and it sits under your kitchen light. We match what is there.
Pattern. Veins, speckles and wood grain are painted back across the repair by hand. A vein that stops at the edge of a fill is the thing people notice. We carry it through.
Sheen. A matt repair on a satin door shows even when the colour is perfect. We match the sheen last, by polishing or by re-coating the area to the same level as the rest.
Then we check it in daylight. A work light hides sheen differences. Daylight does not.
Which repairs are easiest to hide
| Surface and damage | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Plain or speckled stone, edge chip | Very hard to find |
| Plain laminate, burn or chip | Very hard to find |
| Painted wall, hole or dent | Very hard to find, the paint is matched and blended |
| Satin 2-pac cabinet door, chip or gouge | Very hard to find |
| Timber with a clear finish, scratch or water ring | Very hard to find, the grain is matched |
| Veined marble or engineered stone, chip | Good. We draw the vein through. Look closely and you may see it |
| Wood grain or stone-look laminate | Good. The pattern is painted back by hand |
| Cracked tile with a pattern | Good on the crack, fair on a busy pattern |
Timber with a French polish is one of the easiest finishes to repair, because new shellac blends into the old finish. We do those repairs as part of our timber furniture repairs and our French polishing work.
Which repairs are the hardest
We would rather tell you here than on the day.
- Polished black stone. Black shows every change in sheen. The colour is easy. The polish takes more passes, and a very close look can find it.
- Plain high-gloss laminate or 2-pac. Gloss is a mirror. A repair has to be polished to the same mirror, and the edge of the repair can show at a low angle.
- Dull patches on stone from a scourer. We re-polish the patch, and the result depends on how deep the scouring went.
- Old repairs done with glue or epoxy. We remove the old fill first. The result is usually good, but the repair is bigger than the original damage.
- Very large areas. A whole door face or a long run of edge is more visible than a small chip because there is more repair to match.
What we do when a repair can only get close
We tell you before we quote. Then you decide. Sometimes close is fine, because the damage is on the side of the island nobody sees, or the alternative is a new top with a slab that will not match the splashback. Sometimes you decide to replace, and that is a fair call too.
What you can do to help the match
- Do not fill the damage yourself. Epoxy and nail polish have to be ground out and they stain the edges of the repair.
- Do not scrub or sand around the damage. You will dull the sheen around it and make the repair bigger.
- Tell us what the surface is if you know it. The brand and the colour name help. A photo of a spare tile or a cupboard door helps more.
- Send one close-up photo and one from further back, in daylight if you can.
We reply with a fixed written quote within one business day, and we tell you how close the repair will get.