I had given Andrew Woodside Carter favorable mention for fixing my chair, but I must now retract that; herewith is the review I posted on Yelp this week, slightly edited:
I took an old wooden chair to Andrew for regluing/strengthening. He was very friendly and pleasant, and when I received the chair back, indeed it was glued and seems very sturdy. He charged me $85 for the regluing.
One of the vertical pieces in the back was cracked, evidently from having a wedge inserted during the regluing process, and there were messy drips of glue here and there, but the main visible difference was various areas of the chair where the finish had been removed completely and which are now rough to the touch. I noticed that an area that my cat had dug her claws into had been sanded down such that the little gouges were nearly gone—not anything I had requested.
I made up my mind to live with the chair's radically different appearance, but found it continued to nag at me in the ensuing weeks, so I contacted Andrew and arranged to take the chair in for his inspection. My theory was that perhaps one of his assistants had assumed the job was going to be a refinish, and had started stripping off the finish accordingly, only to be told it was only a regluing job, and I expected that Andrew would say, "Goodness—that happened here? I am so sorry. Let me fix this."
Instead he said that he had not touched the chair in any way other than to reglue it, and when I pointed out the cracked vertical piece, obviously a result of the regluing job, he said, "I dunno about that."
I have been sitting on this chair every day for decades. I know what it looked like before I took it to Andrew Woodside Carter, and I know what it looks like now. I was forced to conclude that, at best, he is a sloppy and inattentive craftsperson.
He observed that my chair is a "junky old chair" by way of explaining why it doesn't now look perfect. I completely agree that it did not look perfect when I took it to him, but it was at least covered with finish and didn't have rough areas all over it. I assume that if I were rich and my chair cost $1000, Andrew would have found himself able to be polite, and perhaps he does lovely work for such people and is unfailingly courteous to them, as he was not with me, but I would never deal with him again and advise others to steer clear.
At the end of our discussion, he offered to put shellac on the bare areas, but considering the way the glue was applied, I would never let him touch any item of mine again. Overall, a disappointing and really kind of shocking experience. Actually, about the worst experience I've ever had with the owner of a small business.
ADDENDUM: Yesterday evening I was able to find a photo of my chair that shows that the vertical piece was not cracked before Andrew "I dunno about that" Woodside Carter worked on it. (I had not doubted my perceptions, but it was good to have photographic validation.)
Tom also can easily see the spots on the chair where the finish disappeared during its sojourn in Andrew's shop and theorizes that maybe Andrew was burned previously by a customer who meant to rip him off, and that I received the treatment actually earned by that customer.
I was not going to ask him to fix it—had he offered to refinish the entire chair for free, for instance, I would not have taken him up on it, partly because the vertical piece DID get cracked, and there WAS excess glue here and there—if the reglue job came out like that, how would an actual refinish have gone? But since it is just a "junky old chair," per Andrew, I guess he didn't feel it merited careful attention to details.
Therefore, my purpose in showing him the chair was simply to know what had happened and have the damage acknowledged.
My theory is that one of Andrew's assistants started to sand the chair, was told by another assistant to stop, and that by the time Andrew began work on it, it had already been damaged. That would fit the facts: That the finish was removed from various sections of the chair, but that Andrew is positive he didn't touch the finish.
I guess we will never know since Andrew was not for one second willing to entertain the possibility that I was not telling him a bald-faced lie or that I might actually know what this chair, which I've owned all my life and upon which I sit nearly every day, looked like when I took it to him. Weird. (Sorry for the LONG review. It was a traumatic experience.)
(End of review.)
Off I walked down the street clutching my chair, soon to discover that cab drivers evidently won’t stop for a person with a chair, as they also will not stop for a person with a bicycle.
There was no way I was setting my chair down on the sidewalk anywhere in the Mission, but it was unlikely I could carry it seven blocks home. Fortunately, along came the bus, and I and my chair boarded.
I told the bus driver that I’d need to come back in a moment to pay my fare, and asked if the bus would be stopping at my desired street. “Sure,” he said, leaning as far from me as possible; his head was nearly out the window. I wasn’t sure if he meant, “Sure, you can come back and pay your fare in a moment,” or if he meant, “Sure, the bus does stop there,” so then we had one of those clarifying conversations that always annoys both parties, with the bus driver continuing to lean away from me.
When I came back to pay my fare, he leaned away again. I’ve never experienced anything like that before, but then I considered what he was seeing, and I must digress here to say that the evening Tom and I got back from Sacramento, my ankles, stomach, one arm and one hand had some sort of bites on them, with one ankle by far the most affected area.
They seemed reminiscent of flea bites, and they really itched, though I hadn’t noticed any fleas about, and Tom was completely unbitten, even though we were in almost the exact same spots all weekend.
Of course, I scratched these bites vigorously and ended up with my ankles scabby and reddened.
So I concluded the bus driver was thinking, “Hmm. Here we have a person in her pajamas, face covered with a hat that clearly was dug out of a trash bin, and, from the looks of her legs, suffering from leprosy. Carrying a junky old chair.” And I suspect that explains that, though I did still feel slightly wounded.
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