Lotsa chairs....

As Christmas drew nearer, I still hadn't found a gift for DH. Even a 'trawl' through my old favourite, the Red Balloon website didn't come up with any new ideas that I thought DH would enjoy. Then, the day before Christmas Eve, I was tidying up the lounge room and putting out some decorations, when I noticed DH's recliner chair. 

He bought the chair 15 or so years ago and this year we noticed a hole developing in the leather of one of the arms. DH contacted a number of upholsterers with the view to having the chair recovered. None were interested in taking on the job....those who got back to DH said it would be cheaper to replace the chair. Typical attitude I suspect these days. 

Those holes just kept getting bigger and bigger....:-(

Any way after another few months, a hole developed in the other arm of the chair and DH decided that he would buy another chair. But with all that had been happening in our lives in the latter part of the year, we didn't do anything about looking for a chair to buy. So for Christmas, I gave DH a card with some cash and some pages of recliner chairs printed off from from local furniture dealers...not enough to buy a chair, just a deposit! 

So since Christmas, we have been checking out a stores in a few 'Homemaker Cities'...

This one is Aspley...

Usually a coffee before the checking out of the stores...

We went to lots and lots of stores. DH knew what he wanted; leather and a manual mechanism rather than electric. Some shops had little to choose from, some only had electric, one store wanted full payment despite a 17 week wait for delivery and some stores wanted $2000+ for one chair. 

After 2 unsuccessful shopping expeditions, we went online to see what was available. We found some websites of stores that we hadn't seen at Aspley Homebase...we must have walked past them! Lol.

So today we headed out again...

Well Laz-e-boy had a sale and it had lots of variety but still quite expensive. So it's just as well that we went into another store that we noticed as we drove into the centre. 

Plush only had a few recliners to look at, but the customer service was amazing. This was the first of the 3 that DH 'tested'. He liked it!

But we went away for a coffee and then went back to talk about colour, leather quality, price for manual rather than electric. The price was fair/good, we could get the colour we wanted, so DH paid a deposit and the new chair is ordered. It will be a little while coming but not as long as the 17 weeks quoted by another store. 

But it's still a shame that re-covering a chair is not so economical these days...