Chair repair, the Witts way.....

We used to have a jolly nice tub chair which I bought from Emmaus.

Jackie bought new lovely red material for it from John Lewis and Mum and Dad very kindly paid a really good upholsterer in Bournemouth to do the honours as a Christmas present a couple of years ago.

It was a lovely chair.

Right up until the point where one China Kit Kat Fforbes, aka 'Kaos Kiten' (her spelling), started using it as a scratching post. (Oddly, Thomas, our other cat, was never that bothered by it, preferring to simply sleep on the thing rather than destroy it, but then, as Kipling so wisely opined, 'the female of the species is much deadlier than the male.........')

Here it is, in it's current and very shabby state:

It's day is clearly over.

I mean, how could we possibly,  in all good conscience, invite the likes of Pam and Trevor, ( Associate Priest of Waterbeach and Landbeach and her lay reader hubby) round for a glass or two of prosecco and expect them to sit on the likes of that?

(Actually, the sainted P & T wouldn't give two hoots about what they were sat upon, provided the prosecco was both cold and plentiful......

But that is hardly the point.

Mother would NEVER forgive me!)

Something, (quite clearly, therefore),  Had To Be Done........

Some sideways, or 'lateral', thinking was called for.....

There was absolutely no point in replacing the knackered chair with another upholstered one for The Dawnshredder to sharpen her talons upon, so I reckoned we should get a nice antique office chair......

You know the sort: wooden, swivels round, tilts back, preferably made of oak and very likely still smelling vaguely of fags and typewriter ribbon.....

I trawled ebay.

Plenty of that sort of thing available.....

Going rate?

£300-£400 quid.............

Ulp.........!

In the words of my late, great and revered Grandfather, 'Blow that for a game of soldiers, boy....'.

A few days ago, I was mooching round Emmaus, as you do, when I came upon this:

A quick photo sent via message to The Boss ensured that she didn't hate it and that I was allowed to buy it......

Three fivers flashed briefly in the weak autumn sunlight......

Why was it so cheap?

Ah...........

Well, it was a little bit on the low side, having, at some stage, been deprived of it's castors.......

So, how to fix it?

I started to think about trips to Mackays in Cambridge for to purchase threaded studding, nuts and washers etc to shim it to the correct height.....

Solutions of Byzantine complexity.........

Then 'the still small voice of calm' that was (and is) Grandad Eric came up with the answer:

Yes, two 3/4" sockets...........

dropped down the 'ole, brought the chair up to the desired height.

Genius.

Thanks, Grandad...

x