Michaels Upholstery

I drove all the way from LA just to see these guys. My friends in the Bay area highly recommended him. I bought some antique furniture and need to re-​upholster. Very delicate items and they were able to surprise with their excellent work.

These people are the best! They have recovered a number of different items for us and they insist on perfection. You never have to worry about the quality of the workmanship when you use these professionals. We would never even consider using anyone else. Thanks for the great work!

I wish I had known about them a long time ago. They all have been wonderful to work with: they’re knowledgeable, professional, quick, do an excellent job, and the cost is good. I’m looking forward to the next project with them, large or small. Keep up the great work!

Michael and Sarah are terrific professionals. I had two chairs, a sleeper sofa, and some cushions upholstered and they did an outstanding job. They know and care about detailing, fabrics, and are eager to make customers happy. Love them!

Michael’s Custom Built does beautiful work. No matter what I throw at them they can make it. Their workroom creates luxurious headboards, perfectly proportioned sofas and chairs, one of a kind case pieces, gorgeous throw pillows… the list goes on and on..

Awesome. Got my beautiful seat cushions back in a week. I couldn’t be happier with the level of service, friendliness, and value. Highly recommend Sarah and her team.

We had a great experience with Michael’s Custom Built Upholstery. Had called/​emailed a couple of places but Michael’s was the shop that responded quickly and with what we considered a very fair quote. I really like their informative website – it answered my questions about the pros and cons of reupholstering vs buying new vs slipcovers. I popped over one day about a month ago and Sarah in the office besides being an excellent conversationalist, was also extremely efficient at locating some good choices for me for our sofa. By the next day our choice had been made; downpayment completed, and arrangements concluded for pickup (the Monday after Thanksgiving.) Sarah had said it would take about three weeks. Three weeks to the day – and practically to the hour – our reupholstered couch arrived. It looks great. Excellent job. Highly recommended.

I am very happy working with Sarah and Michael. I am a professional designer, and care deeply about green and healthy design. However in the end, selecting an upholsterer should be about workmanship and a strong eye for detail. At Michael’s, you have access to the safest and greenest upholstery materials, and you will get a top quality upholstery job. They spend time with you to help you select your options, and they stand behind their work.
Re-​upholstery is neither cheap nor fast, but quality is usually not either. I care about results, and I get good results at Michael’s

The experience started out well, dropping off the chair, explaining what I needed, choosing my fabric. The office manager is personable and friendly and it was also done in a reasonable time frame. When I picked up the chair upon first glance it looked fine.
As soon as I brought it home my husband pointed out that the fabric was obviously uneven in the front and slightly lopsided on the sides, by about an inch, we measured. I called them about the problem and they asked me to bring it in to take a look.
When I arrived, before he even saw the chair, Michael was short tempered toward me. Perhaps at something that happened before I got there? I have no idea. At first he tried to tell me he could see nothing wrong but then looking more carefully and within 5 minutes he agreed and took it to the back to have someone work on it. Twenty five to thirty minutes later he brings it out and although it does look somewhat improved it’s still obviously uneven. I had the nerve to notice this and say so, gently.
At this point he gets plain rude and increasingly agitated. He tells me that the degree of apparent unevenness is the nature of this type of chair. He implied that he was talking to an idiot, not at all the kind of customer service I’d read from other reviews. I am a customer, not a chair expert. I never insulted his work, I just observed a measurable lack of symmetry.
Yes, for $ 300 (a lot for our budget and I pushed for it with my husband) I was hoping it would be crafted to a higher standard of quality. However, if he had used a professional tone with a smile on his face telling me that the chair had to look like that for a structural reason I would probably have accepted his opinion and gone home a mostly satisfied customer.
Instead I got a crappy condescending attitude while I still paid full price. I was treated poorly and feel somewhat taken advantage of. I was surprised he was so volatile about my comments as they were not at all aggressive, mean or inappropriate.
If you have a simple job and catch him on a good day, he’s probably fine. I, however do not recommend Moody Michael’s.

What a find!
I went in to find out if a zipper on the cover of a long couch seat cushion could be replaced. Sarah first tried to find a zipper tab that would fit so she could repair the zipper on the spot, but no luck. Then after I mentioned I could sew, she offered to just sell me the zipper if I wanted to do the repair myself. I really appreciated that she offered me an option to save money by doing the repair myself, which I decided to do.
The same cushion was over 10 years old and was sagging in the center. I had been putting off re-​stuffing it. I had such a good customer service experience with the zipper that I emailed Sarah some photos of the couch so she could see the amount of sagging. She gave me an initial estimate so I could decide whether I wanted to trek the cushion itself in to the store for a final estimate. Her estimate was in range so my husband and I brought the cushion in. Again, she presented us with various price options and carefully and thoroughly described the advantages of each proposed approach.
We decided to go with all new stuffing around the foam core of the cushion. Previously the cushion stuffing had more feathers and dacron than down. Michael’s uses a higher quality stuffing with much more down and no dacron at all. The result was absolutely heavenly!
My husband naps on the couch regularly and he adores the newly stuffed cushion. We’re completely happy customers. Great quality, great service, good prices. I highly recommend this store.

Michaels furniture upholstry is absolutely wonderful! They’ve given me a gift that brought tears to my eyes and I’m overjoyed!!!
I just today picked up two antique chairs that I had reupholstered at Michaels (after they’d been reupholstered elsewhere and almost destroyed). They were very meaningful antiques that belonged to my great grandmother and after the chop job of the previous upholsterer I was absolutely devistated.
I was initially afraid to look — afraid that my chairs would still look terrible and never be the same when it was time to pick them up from Michaels. (I’ve regrettted immensely having reupholstered them in the first place.) But there was no need to fear.
Michaels did such an amazing job that I literally began to cry upon seeing my restored chairs in such beautiful condition. Other than the color, they are exactly as they had been before the chop job upholstery by the other shop. The lines are perfect, the curves exactly as they should be, the fabric nice and tight. They’re perfect!
Michaels knows what they’re doing, the quality of workmanship is exquisite — you can’t go wrong with them and they’re worth every penny (and they were not the most expensive place in Marin, either!)