The Best Seat In The House

Here’s something that my house doesn’t need more of: Chairs.

So what did I do?  I made a chair.  But not just any chair—I made the best chair of all!

It all started when I was being a responsible citizen, emptying the trash from my car into the dumpster.  As I opened the lid, I took a step back just in case any rabid raccoons decided to jump out and ferociously attack me.  I peeked in to check for animals and I was shocked to see a massive thing sitting there.  This thing wasn’t an animal, but rather it was a beautiful pleather passenger seat from a Tesla Model 3.  Now, why would someone throw away a perfectly good seating apparatus?!  To answer this question, I fished the heavy chair out of the dumpster and threw it into the back of my car.

Let me tell you the things that I’m not good at:  knitting, responding to text messages, and fixing seats.  But I can’t think of a single time when someone not knowing what they’re doing has led to a bad result. Ok, I can think of many times, but this was not going to be one of them! I was determined!

I took the seat to my garage and used my basic knowledge of electronics to figure out if this seat was functional.  One-by-one, I traced the wires to understand the wiring harness, but then I recognized that the seat had a built-in airbag, which meant that if I added power to the wrong wires, then the airbag would go *boom * in my face. This immediately shifted my top priority to be to dismantle the airbag to avoid a painful explosion. After the airbag was removed, I ordered parts for the project and started to connect wires together.  Did I know what I was doing?  No! But was I making progress? Not sure…

After many delays and testing, I discovered that the chair was perfectly functional, and my goal of making the best office chair was attainable.  I sketched a design for the final product with the goals of the seat being infinitely adjustable, incredibly comfortable, and totally functional.  There were many things that I had to learn in the process, including fabricating parts from iron, designing 3D printed parts, and wiring electronics, but after almost two years, it was complete!  I made the best seat in the house!

Here are some details about the final product:

My new chair is my favorite because I had a hand in making it. Now it will forever live in my house with my other beloved chairs.  Thank God it was a car seat in that dumpster and not a raccoon because it would have been way harder to turn a raccoon into something useful! Look Momma, I made a chair!!