51- The chair

I have a chair, like mostly everyone else in the world. I bought it back in 2002 after searching all over town during several afternoons.

The thing is, last year it snapped a screw on one of the arms. So I took off the arm to fix it, but found that a piece of the screw was still stuck in the chair and there was no way to get it out. Long story short the chair ended up with a huge gaping hole in the side that day and no right arm. I made a mental note to fix it, but never got around to it.

A couple of weeks ago, the left arm snapped a screw. I didn't think much of it either, given my previous chair fixing experience, and ignored it. But for some reason the chair started to get kind of uncomfortable: it was leaning back a little bit too much, I had to use a pillow to work comfortably, and I even fell over backwards once when the wheel caught on the carpet.

It dawned on me a few days ago that it was leaning like that because in these cheapo department store executive chairs, the arms tie the back and the seat together. A snapped screw and no right arm means the back leans a little too far.

So today I went out on a limb again. I took a trip to the hardware store and bought some 1/4" bolts. Then I took off the arms and took a drill to the screw holes (dang chinese chairs use metric screws, and the bolts I had were US made). And then I pushed everything back into position and bolted it.

Wow. What a difference. My chair feels normal again. I mean, really normal. Like it hadn't felt in over a year. I don't need the pillow anymore, it doesn't lean back more than you need it to, it's like a whole other chair...

And it cost me $0.75 and about an hour. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner.