Dan contacted me about a shell chair that needed some love. It had seen better days for sure. It was missing a few feet, the shell was cracked and the entire surface has some sort of goo brushed over it… but underneath there was a beautiful chair wanting to shine through again.
A good bit of time in the workshop later, and it is truly magnificent.
Before: From the original photos, the crack was evident, but it didn’t look too bad…
[Insert lost image here — thanks, Typepad!]
My friend Dan sent a photo of a busted up Eames chair from a Garage sale. From the photos it did not look too bad.
In the workshop: Under the lights and scrutiny of the workshop, the evils truly appeared… the crack was somewhat structural and the layer of goo was at least 3mils thick. It took a lot of time to get the chair back to the base layer of fiberglass and repair the crack (which involved grinding out a good bit of dirty repair gunk.).
Pro-tip: If you can’t fix something right, you might give it a pass and call someone who can… It’s always harder to fix a bad repair than to fix it right in the first place.
After: After the scouring, the repair and some re-coating, the chair shines like new. Add some TLC to the H-base and some new feet and it’s bright and shiny again.
(This is the corner where the crack was… can you spot it?)
[More gratuitous close-up shots]
