Kris and I received from her grandmother a great chair. We eventually had it re-upholstered but it wore down, too. So, we took it to my basement study and it has been my reading chair for more than a decade. One of the chairs in our living room needs to be re-upholstered so we’ve been to a few furniture stores. But one day Kris simply declared that she wanted to get her grandmother’s chair redone.

So, last Friday we took my great old reading chair to a furniture restoration and re-upholstering shop in Grayslake, Illinois. What a delight.

Got any restoration stories? Any chairs?

We brought our chair in, a wonderful man lifted it up on nothing short of a stage, looked it over but good, felt it and touched it and oogled about it. Then another worker came by, did the same. They got to talking about it and what might be underneath it. Then one man asked if it was from the 1930s. Then the owner Jose came over and observed that someone had added at least one too many “panels” in the back. So he took it off the stage, put it on the floor gently, and then sat in it and declared, “See, it’s too tight on the shoulders. You sit in it.” So, I did, but I showed him that I sat sideways — which relieved my shoulder some but he was thinking, “See what I told you? Too many panels. It’s tighter than it needs to be.” Jose began to describe what they could do with it. ?And how he could repair the broken back leg.

We were hooked. These folks love old furniture and love to restore them. We picked out some upholstering … and Jose knew when to say what as Kris and I meandered through the colors and designs … and now we await the restoration of our chair. It’ll take awhile. We can wait.