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Story of the Above Recliner Alteration
The client had a 39 year old daughter in a care facility. The daughter had the body of a 12 year old. The mom had tried endlessly to find a chair that would fit her daughter, but with no success. She could find full size chairs and children's chairs, but nothing in-between.
Over the years I've reupholstered countless LazyBoy recliners and know them very well. As the client told me about her daughters needs and her efforts to find a chair, I began to think about the possibililty of rebuilding a LazyBoy recliner to fit her daughter. The LazyBoy is the only recliner I know of that uses recliner mechanisms that are connected by the wood frame of the recliner. It just might work.
First we had to find a used LazyBoy recliner. Eventually we found the large man's wingchair recliner, shown in the picture. Not idea, but useable.
To prepare to get the right measurements I met the mom at the daughter's room and got the measurements that I needed to have the chair fit the daughter. As I rebuilt the recliner and began reupholstering it, I met with the client each time I took it out to the daughter's place several times to have her try the chair. During each fitting we determined how much padding to put each section, where to put the seam in the backrest so that is would hit the daughter's neck and shoulders in just the right place. We made any necessary adjustments at each fitting.
As the project neared completion, the client decided that she wanted a seat belt on the chair to hold the daughter in place (so she wouldn't fall out). We used a standard seat belt from an auto parts store. A second amentity we added was a pocket (for suppies, books, etc.) on the top back of the headrest.
The last picture of the slideshow shows the finished chair as delivered for the daughter to enjoy.
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