Hello everyone, this is how I spent my Friday afternoon...
Fixing things!
Let me give you a little backstory on what I am fixing specifically.
About 1 year ago, my gf and I went out looking for a table and chair set that would go with the rest of our stuff. Very quickly we learned that a table and chair set is not cheap... especially a nice one. So, we did what anyone in our position might do... we headed to Walmart.
At Walmart we found a decent set that matched our stuff perfectly. It wasn't all that nice but we decided matching our stuff was the higher priority. We got it home and put it together. Everything was perfect for about 6 months... then the chairs started falling apart. Not just part of the chairs, but all of it. The cloth on the seats started coming off, the screws started falling out of the bottom of the chairs, and the seat itself was beginning to become disconnected from the frame of the chair. They were pretty much unusable.
As time went on, it got so bad that every single seat had become disconnected with the chair... at this point, something had to change. We either had to go buy new stuff or somehow salvage the stuff we had. Considering our financial position we decided it was salvage time! Neither of us have any kind of history with building things or fixing things, but never the less we decided we would give it a shot.
My gf went right to pinterest and found out how to reupholster the seats using cloth from the local craft store. Once she purchased the cloth all she needed was some scissors and a staple gun and she became a mad woman crafting away! Before I knew it every seat was clothed in a new beautiful black and white checkered pattern. She did a great job. Now it would be my turn...
Like I mentioned before I have absolutely no experience with fixing things but this shouldn't be too difficult as it was mostly just putting things back where they had fallen out. However, I had to make sure the same problems wouldn't just reappear again. So, I dusted off my trusty tool box and got to work...
As I scoured through the tool box, it was clear that these would be my weapons of choice:
A philips head screw driver and 2 tubes of super glue. The plan was to use super glue along the entire frame of the chair where the seat sits as seen below:
Then once the glue holds the seat in place I would place screws back in the holes that were already set up for me, only this time I would use longer screws to give them a less likely chance of falling out:
(The screw on the left is the size screw that came with the chair, the screw on the right would be the new and improved one The Fommy would decide to use)
To further prevent the screws from ever falling out again, the plan was to coat the screws in super glue once they were in place to keep them from falling out. Then to further, further prevent the screws from ever falling out, I planned on placing a piece of black electrical tape over each screw to lesson the odds of these pesky screws ever falling out again.
Once this was all done on 2 of the chairs it was time for lunch while I let the glue dry. Luckily there was some left over food from the night before in the form of:
Yum! Who doesn't love them some next day left over pizza from pizza hut?!
After my break was over, it was time to test the chairs before I got started on the last 2. They looked and felt more sturdy than they had since we owned them...
I was pretty pleased with how the first two turned out so I went ahead and followed the same process for the last two. After those were completed this is what I saw:
I know, I know, it looks like something right out of a magazine, right?! Just kidding... but really I was pretty pleased with myself. I am pretty confident that the extra measures I put in place will help these chairs last a long time, probably a lot longer than we originally expected when purchased them from Walmart.
Oh and I almost forgot, now Alessandra can feel a lot safer sitting in her chair:
Which really is the most important chair in the place!
I hope you enjoyed my story and maybe even learned something from my tutorial on how to properly repair a Walmart chair set when it starts falling apart... ha :)
This has been an original story by @jrcornel
All the images are my own
Follow: @jrcornel