Jeff's Desk Chair

Picture this. Jeff walks in the front door. Sighs. Puts his briefcase down. I say, "Hey, how was work?" He replies, "Not bad, but I have a lot of work to do tonight". "Oh no..." I start to say before he interrupts me with a devious look. "No, Lauren. I have a lot of work to do, you know?" he says, nodding, "Lots and lots of work." I fall for this pretty much every other time he says it. You see, in Jeff language that means: break out the whiskey and noise canceling headphones, I'm about to get my game on. I'm not going to tell you how often that happens because some of you would be appalled. I will say this - taking over the universe is not a part time job.

So, Jeff spends a lot of time at his desk working. The desk takes up some prime real estate in the living room, with a good view of the TV. As much as he'd like a man-cave with several monitors and a microwave on his desk, we share the living room so there has to be some compromise. One thing I cannot stand is an ugly desk chair. When I finally moved here, Jeff had purchased this monstrosity from Ikea (they CAN do wrong it seems).

Yeah. It lives in the garage now, where I routinely curse at it. I know you probably think I'm overreacting, but that thing was so tall it obstructed my view of the television from the couch. Okay, maybe not. It did loom ominously in my peripheral vision, though. I found myself really missing the desk chair we left back in Seattle. A vintage Eames Aluminum Group Management chair I picked up on eBay for $200 (they retail for over 1k) in grey fabric.  Seriously, if I could have picked one furniture item to bring to the UK, that chair would have been it. It's a classic! It looks like this (I couldn't find a picture of ours but this is pretty much it - just imagine this one with a lot of dog hair on it).

Sniff. Miss you chair.

Tough act to follow. I set my sights even higher this time. I just had to have a Arne Jacobsen Series 7 swivel chair (made by Fritz Hansen). Never mind that they cost like $1700 new. After some diligent searching, my efforts were rewarded in a surprisingly short amount of time. I scored a vintage one for just over £100. The paint job was hideous and the chrome was kinda beat up, but for that amount of money I could deal with it. It even had a Fritz Hansen sticker on the bottom - the real deal!

So you can see why it may have been passed over... haha. Well, it has recently returned from the upholsterer and it looks way better.

To be fair, the job was done well, but isn't exactly how an original would be upholstered. In particular, the chair seat and back should be one continuous piece of fabric and as you can see there is a seam where the seat and the back meet. I can live with that for now. I think the upholsterer had more experience with overstuffed, floral couches than vintage desk chairs.

We're both happy. Well, except that Jeff discovered (while the desk chair was being redone) that he actually doesn't mind and might even prefer having a regular chair at his desk. And we're kind of worried that the rollers are going to wreck the floor. So, we're happy... for now.