My SIL had her hip done (or it might have been her knee, I can't remember now. Another bit of old age creep) . My brother bought her a single motor Riser Recliner chair, advertised locally to him on Gumtree. It worked really well for the intended purpose. I vaguely looked at them, but DH wasn't interested (we already have electric recliners in the sofas) and I didn't bother.
Time moved on. A couple of weeks ago, my brother bought a better riser recliner. It was in tip top condition, was a petite model, and had a dual motor. It was much better made than the other one, and he was singing its praises. So much so, that he went and got another one for himself.
The other day we popped over to see them, and he was keen that we tried the new chairs just to see why they were so good. I sat in one and it was surprisingly comfortable. I got DH to try it. He wasn't too keen, but 'had a go' to be polite. He really liked it.
And so, I did some research, looked around to see what was available, and found a bargain of a Sheborne leather chair in the next town, and a top of the range HSL fabric chair near that. We arranged to see both.
We went along to see the leather chair first, and had agreed a code phrase before hand just in case it wasn't possible for us to signal to each other if we didn't like it. It was immaculate, used for a month, and very comfortable. It was on Gumtree, and we decided to buy it immediately. I messaged my brother to let him know we'd joined the Old Farts Chair club.
The second chair was on Ebay, and the auction was still running. We wanted to see it to see whether to bid or not. It was another immaculate chair, and this one hadn't been used. We decided we'd bid and see if we won.
At home with the first chair, we had nowhere to put it without rearranging everything, and no point in rearranging until we knew whether we had to fit in one or two chairs. Luckily the auction was a short one, we won, and we braved the snow to collect it. I told my brother we now had two Old Farts Chairs, and he started to guffaw.
We then spent hours trying to rearrange the furniture to fit them in. We knew that something had to go, either one of the two seaters, or our lovely Gravity chair. Currently, the Gravity chair has been relocated, and we're seeing how it goes. The living room looks a bit like an Old Folks Home sitting room, like an assortment of chairs has been dropped in at random.
We've had to do some artful arrangement to try and make it look a bit more considered, and this means we've lost all our hidden storage (the space behind the sofas). We have a pile of stuff that needs to be reviewed and stored, donated, or chucked.
My brother turned up to look at the chairs. He's always so enthusiastic, even if they'd been a disaster he would have found something positive to say. He liked both of them. We sat in the living room and chatted, and the new furniture arrangement made this much better than the old arrangement.
Usually we end up in the kitchen, but maybe we'll socialise more in the living room now?
The cats have been exploring everything, and are completely confused about where they are allowed to sit. When we put the chairs in the room, before we started arranging, Izzy got up in the same place whereshe usually gets up... only now it was a single chair, and there's no nice fluffy cat bed. She did look surprisingly comfortable though, and she was most put out when I made her get off.
We've got to sort out the side tables next, but we need to know whether we're staying like this or whether one of the sofas is going. The room looks so...so...full of furniture right now.
We'll give it a day or so, and see how it beds down.
