If a little denial is good for the soul, a lot is good for the home.
At my home, if I weren’t in denial about the stained carpet, the disheveled bonus room, the frayed bedspread or the dingy paint, I would be in a perpetual state of repair, replace and spend. I would have even less time and money than I have now, which is hard to imagine.
But a point comes — say, when you pull up the rotting blinds and they fall in shreds on your head or someone sits in a bad chair and risks spinal- cord injury — when you have to put home-furnishing denial aside and face facts. This is how I found myself and my eight kitchen chairs in the furniture hospital.
My chair denial crashed to a halt when my cousin, a firefighter, felt a chair give way under him. He hopped up and, with his bare hands, pulled the chair back from the seat, ushered the parts to the mudroom and said, “I’m putting this out of service before someone gets hurt.”
“Those chairs have gotten a little rickety,” I said, apologizing.
“Rickety? They’re an emergency-room visit waiting to happen.”
No wonder. Since I bought the chairs — French country pine with rush seats — 16 years ago, they’ve become the most used and abused furniture in the house. They’ve been rocked back, leaned on, scooted in and yanked out. They’ve provided support through meals, coffee breaks, hair styling, counseling sessions, homework projects, board games and taxes.
They’ve been hoisted for the kids’ lion-taming acts, stood on to change light bulbs and set on their sides to barricade the dogs. Eventually, their arms and backs became as wiggly as loose teeth. Except for my husband and kids, who understand the chairs’ weaknesses, I wouldn’t seat anyone I cared about in those chairs, though I could see putting the husband of one of my girlfriends in one.
I considered fixing them. A furniture-repair expert gave me an estimate. To take the chairs apart and reglue and clamp them would cost — please have a seat — $750. This was reasonable given all the work, but not reasonable given that’s about what I paid for the chairs in the first place.
Still, tossing and replacing them felt like betrayal.
My husband is often handy with stuff like this. He fired a few nails into the chairs and squeezed in some glue, but that didn’t hold. Glue ran down the legs like nasal discharge, and dried. (We later learned his handiwork made the ultimate repair a lot harder.)
I continued to ignore the problem. We lived with the chairs, accommodating them the way you would an older relative with bad hips — until they almost put my firefighter cousin on disability.
That’s when I called Mike Ackerman of Ackerman & Sons, a Denver furniture-refinishing and repair outfit that has been in business for five generations. He fixes chairs like mine every day.
When I asked if someone in his workshop could show me how to fix my chairs myself, he invited me and my chairs over. Head carpenter Russ Jones showed me what to do. So I rolled up my sleeves, befriended the cordless drill and got to work. By the end of the day, my chairs were tighter than a barfly at last call, reinforced for many more years of domestic abuse.
Syndicated columnist Marni Jameson is the author of “The House Always Wins” (Da Capo). Contact her through .
Take a seat
Before you toss that wobbly desk or rickety chair, fix it the way they do at Ackerman’s.
MATERIALS
• A cordless drill or electric screwdriver.
• A dead blow hammer. It provides wallop without hurting wood.
• Sharp metal scrapers.
• Wood shims.
• Wood glue. (Don’t use craft glue, silicone, contact cement, or Liquid Nails.)
• Pipe and slide clamps.
• A half-inch paint brush.
• Rags and a toothbrush.
DIRECTIONS
1. Disassemble. Take apart the weak joints. Remove seats from chairs. Don’t take apart pieces still holding well. Remove screws and use the dead blow hammer to detach pieces. Check dowels. If they’re broken, drill out broken ends and replace with same size dowels.
2. Scrape. Use the sharp metal scraper to remove all old dried glue, being careful not to scrape too much wood.
3. Glue. Put wood glue in a small cup. Use the paint brush to coat surfaces that will be rejoined, dowels and dowel holes.
4. Clamp. Using pipe clamps or slide clamps (for smaller distances) put pressure on glued joints. Put a wood shim between the clamp and the wood to protect it. Tighten clamps until glue squeezes out the sides. (If it doesn’t, you haven’t used enough glue.) Wipe excess glue with a damp rag. Use a wet toothbrush to clean crevices.
5. Dry. Let the chairs sit clamped for several hours or overnight. Replace screws and seats.
Fast fix: For furniture that’s just a tad loose, try glue injections — it’s like Botox instead of surgery. Clamp furniture first. Then carefully drizzle instant glue (cyanoacrylate, also called E-Z Bond or Zap-A-Gap) right into the joint. Reapply a few times as glue seeps in. Keep a rag underneath to catch drips; this stuff dries fast and will damage finishes and fabrics. Spray the joint once with an accelerator like Hot Shot, which flash-dries the glue. Then, sit back and relax.
