Some people have their recliner or their rocker or their rolling desk chair. It’s a spot where they spend a lot of time and they enjoy the time they spend sitting in it. I have my painting chair.
I “saved” it out of my Opa’s attic (that’s German for grandfather, in case you didn’t know.) I brought it home with plans to paint it and sell it. While it was waiting its turn to be painted who-knows-what-color, I sat in it when I worked on other pieces of furniture. I soon realized that this vintage, kid-sized desk chair was the perfect height. This chair would never get a makeover. Instead, it would become my hardworking painting chair. It’s sturdy enough to stand on, it’s small enough to tuck under my workbench when not in use, it’s pretty comfortable and it really saves my back.
I pulled it out the other day to paint a piece while my mom was over. I showed her my “painting chair” thinking I was so clever to discover it was the perfect chair for painting and working on furniture. She told me my Opa (her dad) used it for that very thing. He would sit in it to paint and work on odd jobs (he was a home builder and a bit of a tinkerer.)
Suddenly this chair, that was a handy tool, became something special and priceless. My Opa loved DIY and most of my memories of him are tied to tinkering with a go-cart or fixing a broken fishing rod or rigging up a solution to keep the squirrels out of his bird feeders. As I was painting today, I knew my Opa would be so proud that I hauled that chair out of the attic and was now using it the same way he did.
Who knew something like a school-desk-chair-turned-work-chair could tie together generations?
