Fixing Nathaniel's Comfy Chair

Project:
So I would never be one to call my wife big but there are some things even a tiny woman like her should not do. For example, sit in Nathaniel's comfy play chair. Well, Melanie found it just way too tempting and sat in it two nights ago up in the play room during one of our conversations and BAM! It shattered to pieces! Good job Melanie! (smirk). Sadly enough the first thing I was thinking was: Great! I have something else to blog about now...what has happened to me?

Process:
The first thing I had to figure out was how to repair it or if it was even possible. Looking at the way it was constructed I was contemplating creating my own custom pieces to replace the plastic pieces that were broken until I realized something: The chair used the same type of piece for all connection, but the front of the chair only had two metal legs attached whereas the rear had three, one of which was broken out of the plastic piece. Then it dawned on me that I could just switch the front and the back pieces. Since the manufacturers used rivets I had to grind them off and replace them with bolts. At first I tried it with regular screws that I was planning on bending so they wouldn't fall out but the screws were too brittle and broke so I had to drill out the legs and the plastic pieces, cut the bolts to length and put them back together with loctite so the nuts wouldn't fall off. And that was that!

Pictures:
Nathaniel showing me where the chair was broken

A close-up of the plastic foot that was broken out

The equivalent piece at the front of the chair

Nathaniel helping me punch out the ground off rivets

The parts all taken off the chair; two broken (rear) and two front (good) ones

First attempt of putting the legs back together with regular 3" screws

When I tried to bend the first screw it broke right off so I had to try it some other way

Cutting the bolts to the right length

The cut-off bolt

Before and after picture of shortening the bolt

All the bolts after they were cut to length

Voila, all done

Close-up of the broken (rear) piece that was now at the front

Close-up of the good (front) piece that is now at the rear

Another close-up of the good (front) piece that is now in the back

Tools:
Punch I used to punch out the rivets and plastic pieces

Do I really need a description for this picture?

Angle grinder

Cordless drill

Pliers, which I ended up not using because the screws just broke off

Materials:

Bolts

Loctite to make sure the nuts don't come off

Cost:
$2.50

Time:
1.5hr

Savings:
Ok, Melanie just told me that she only paid like $8 bucks for this chair. If I knew that, I wouldn't have spent an hour and a half trying to fix it. Bummer.

Conclusion:
Success even though it is somewhat unsatisfactory now because I just found out that the chair was actually really cheap when Melanie bought it. I hope she learned her lesson! I sure did; I'll make sure to find out how much this stuff costs from now on before I try to fix it.