Once in a blue moon–nah, not even that often–I do something that is actually handy. Like today, I finally decided to take the whole cushion off my kitchen chair with the broken legs, and replace the ripped cushion on my kitchen chair with the good legs. And because my family would demand photographic evidence that I actually did this, here it is:
The good and the bad:
First things first: I unscrewed the bad cushion from the good chair and took the thing apart. I used a screwdriver that my brother suggested I buy, one of those deals that has interchangeable screw tips, or whatever they’re called. “This isn’t so bad,” I thought as the screws came out easily.
Next, I took the good cushion and fitted it to the good chair frame and discovered that, oh, making chairs is not an exact science and the holes in the cushion from one isn’t necessarily going to fit exactly in the frame of another. Okay. Time to rethink this. So I thought. I probably can just put new holes in the cushion, I realized. But that would be hard with a hand screwdriver. So I decided that it was time to take out the drill that I bought last summer and hadn’t yet used. I think it was summer. I have no idea. I just realized I should probably have a drill at some point, and I had a Home Depot card, so I bought one. Oh, and I never charged it. Which I discovered when I tried to use it. But that was after I had to figure out how to open the “chuck”, and after about five minutes’ hard work, realized that I was trying to turn it clockwise instead of counterclockwise. Figuring that out speeded up the process of removing the chuck and inserting the Phillips-head bit.
Now, I could take the drill and use it to make new holes in the good cushion. Well, except there wasn’t much of a charge, so it was a matter of plugging it in and waiting a minute or so, and then screwing in a screw and when the power drained waiting another minute or so.
Oh, yeah. That’s a wooden tray table the chair is on. I don’t have a worktable. But it worked, so maybe it is a worktable.
Finally, my work is done. I have two good kitchen chairs now (one died a long time ago), and I’m hoping the two remaining chairs don’t collapse under any company. The cushion from the one in the garage collapsed under my niece while she was over for dinner, thankfully not causing any harm to her. But it was embarrassing. Oh. The good chair:
Ta-dah! Meryl fixes a chair. Write this down in your diary, folks, because I think it may never happen again in your or my lifetimes.