Total renovation of a pair of 20 years old Crockett & Jones Chelseas. Poorly cared for and heavily worn, combined with sloppy repairs, made these shoes far beyond worth repairing. But they were perfect for a cool video. The biggest challenge was the destroyed heel stiffeners, that I replaced with new ones. The upper was badly damaged and needed a lot of repairing. Deep scratches and cracked creases were fixed, filled, boned and buffed, before dyed and polished. New elastics, heel lining, original tugs and heel socks.
Finally new JR leather soles with a discreetly bevelled waist.
The goal from the beginning was to fool the customer to believe that I had replaced his shoes with a brand new pair, but the upper and elastics was too stretched out to eliminate the creases. Hopefully he'll be happy anyway. (A previous cobbler had stitched on RMW heel tugs on them, making many people think they are RMW's. They are NOT)
Many questions about the price on this.
The customer got a negotiated price since I got to borrow the shoes for a long time for the making of the video. I would probably have to charge about 600€ for a job like that, normally. The shoes cost about 500€ 20 yrs ago. Quite difficult to price a job like this, since I choose to do more than necessary, just to make a cool video. Under normal circumstances I would probably deem them not worthy of repair, but the model is discontinued, and they are broken in to the customers feet. The job cost almost as much as a similar shoe would cost new.