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Saturday 22 June 2013

Rescued

I promise this isn't another upholstery post, honestly. In fact if anything it's a bit of a rant. I needed a new chair for my desk. Andrew and I share an office and at one stage we both had proper black office chairs. Andrew broke his. Then broke a second and so I donated mine as I really wanted one that would disappear under the desk, one without arms. So I swiped one from the kitchen table as a short term fill in. Given the choice I will always buy an old piece of furniture, helps my pocket and the planet. I'd been scouring the charity shops and second hand furniture stores for a  while but hadn't found anything.

A couple of weeks ago we were driving back from the farm shop and I spotted some furniture that had been dumped in a field entrance. Here's the rant - why do some people feel that the countryside is their own personal waste disposal tip? This time it was several pieces of furniture. They had to have had a vehicle, so why not drive to our town refuse site? It's only about three miles from where they dumped, is open 364 days a year, takes almost anything and accepts vans? They even sell stuff that people leave if it's in good condition. Failing that we have a number of charities locally that will collect furniture and sell it on. Anyway rant over. I made Andrew pull over as I had spotted something, a dining chair.

Discarded
It had lost the drop in seat but apart from that was perfectly sound if not a rather nasty colour. But a quick rub down and three coats of paint changed that. I then cut a piece of plywood for the drop in and made a seat.

1/2" ply for the base

Several layers of padding
Et voila! A new desk chair.

New chair and office intern

And on a completely different subject could my French speaking readers help? You may remember that I have daily email alerts from French estate agents sent to my inbox. I'm nowhere near fluent but I do prefer to get the non-English versions as quite often things get lost in translation, and I'm pretty good on estate agent speak. Occasionally however you get recognised as being a British computer and get the English (or probably the Google translate) version, as was the case this week. We were fine downstairs, we got the stone sink, magnificent fireplace and oak staircase. But then it went a bit haywire as in the upstairs hall was a 'porky'. I've no idea what this is! I managed to get on the French site and found it was a 'bolet', which is, I think, a type of mushroom but in the back of my head I also have it as an exterior stone staircase which also makes no sense as we'd already ascertained that the stairs were interior and made of oak. Anyone any clues?


Not ideal at the top of your stairs

5 comments:

  1. Well, we have a 12 volume (twelve volume!) Robert that someone gave us, and various specialised dictionaries, but so far... nothing. You could live in a house with a mushroom it seems. We'll keep trying. Love the chair. Awful way to dump it, but in this case, your gain.

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    1. Thanks for looking anyway Margaret, maybe the mushroom is French slang for a bad case of mold!

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  2. I've just run this past a very word-proficient French friend, and the best she can come up with is... could it possibly be a typo for something: eg 'volet'?

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  3. I think your friend is probably on the right lines, and thanks for trying. Today I was offered a house with a 'sceptical tank'!

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  4. ;) And we could all do with a few more sceptical tanks, I'm sure....

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