I have a bad habit of leaning back in my chair when I’m sitting at the computer. Sometimes I lean back so far that the crappy arms on the office depot chair snap and I perform what looks like the butterfly-stroke as I try not to fall backwards. It’s a graceful scene.
After not learning my lesson FOUR TIMES I decided to stop buying the crappy replacement arms and try to reinforce them so this doesn’t happen again (because god forbid I buy a decent chair made out of respectable materials.)
The arms of the chair are made out of plastic, with a flaired out section for the arm rest, and are attached to the base and the backrest by four bolts each. The arm rest flairs out so much that I figured I could cut out a piece of plywood that would, when bolted beside the arms, take the strain from the weight being applied to the backrest. I found a few scraps that used to be bookshelves and cut them down to size, sanded them, and added a few coats of polyurethane to make them classy enough to match the exquisite office depot chair. The original bolts weren’t long enough so I took one of them to the hardware store and matched them up with longer bolts.
After attaching the plywood “strain-reliefs” with the new bolts I took a step back to enjoy the new tank-of-a-seat I just modded. This thing has been going strong for six months now and shows no sign of strain!
wow same happen to me all the time.
its time to go home depot and buy some plywood
Hey Marcos! Grab at least 3/4″ plywood for real strength and you might also need to buy some longer bolts too. Post a pic here when you’re done. I’d love to see it!