My Biggest Refinishing Challenge Yet- Leather-topped Desk

Since opening in July I have learned A LOT about refinishing and repainting furniture. It's been a great experience and I feel much more confident lately. But then my neighbor brought in a large leather-topped desk in really bad shape and asked that I make it my next project. Wow, it needed a lot of love. The leather was burned in places and the wood was scratched and dented, AND it was missing a drawer. He wanted it to have a mahogany look and new black leather for his library.

I went to work researching how to replace leather and re-stain antique wood. There wasn't a lot of how-to's so I have added this one to help anyone out there with similar projects.

To the pictures!

                

As you can see I had my work cut out for me. I decided to use Poly-shades by Minwax so I wouldn't have to completely  strip the old stain. This an old piece and stripping brings the value way down on antiques.

Here's the original color. My customer wanted mahogany...

First, I sanded with 220 sandpaper and wiped off the dust.

Here's how the Minwax stain looked when dry. Amazing difference, right? And it had poly-urethane in the mix so I saved a step. 

Ok, so sanding, filling, and staining was the easy part. Now to my main concern- the leather top. At first I thought I might be able to save the leather, but it was too damaged. But if you do find a leather topped piece of furniture with minimal damage you can buy leather conditioner and that should save it.
Here are the pictures of the leather I was working with...

I'm not sure what was done to this desk, but there were huge circular burns and gouges. I couldn't save it, so after some research the first recommended step was to put stripper on the leather to make removal easier. An hour of struggling with the leather later, stripper was not helping. I then decided to try heat (which worked with the contact paper table). And to my relief, my trusty hair dryer did the job again.

An hour of struggling and I wasn't getting anywhere with stripper. 

Look how easily the leather came off with a little heat. I had the dryer set to medium and held it on each section for a few seconds. If the heat is too high is melts the leather making removal more difficult. 

This was the corner I struggled with before I tried using heat so I had to patch the scratches with wood filler before I added the leather.
I added a black leather piece to the desk with cement adhesive I cut a piece a little large than the space. After gluing the middle of the leather first, I trimmed the excess leather with an Exacto knife and glued the edges last. Some black leather shoe polish and the leather top was as good as new. You can order a new leather top online, but that was out of my customer's price range so I used nice furniture leather. 

Here's the black leather with a custom glass top that I ordered. 

And here's the finished product. We ended up cutting a piece of wood and staining it mahogany to cover the missing drawer. Other than that the desk was as good as new.