FRED

Fred called this morning.

He'd been on my mind, but after our last conversation I'd expected I'd have to chase him down. We'd spoken in vague terms about reupholstering my French dining chairs after the first of the year. Yes, we'd discussed fabrics several times, and come to logger heads (an antiquated expression? Are we talking turtles or Paul Bunyan????)

This is what I've had in mind:

In essence, Fred is a purist, and I'm not. I want double cushion seats on my two armchairs and Fred refuses to accommodate my vision. He insists these chairs are not designed for double cushions. He really won't compromise. Excuse me, Fred? Isn't the customer always right? Apparently not, so our chair seats will be constructed like these:

Yet, I think Fred and I have a future together. His labor is more that the previous upholsterer, but the cost is justified by his attention to detail and fervor. I mean, I expected to hunt him down and here we are on January 4th ready to roll. His son came to collect the 5 chairs--Fred already had an armchair stored in his back room--and said the fabric has arrived and the first armchair seat has been rebuilt. WHOA!

I'd been waffling a bit over my leather selection. Obviously, as they say, "The die is cast." The existing leather choice is in-play. Except, the really great news is that Fred's fabrics are downright (that's archaic, too, isn't it?) reasonable. I could say "Toss out those 3 yards!" and the $$ loss would be negligible.

Tomorrow after the gym I'll stop by for one more double-cushion conversation (with slide show in-hand), but Fred won't back down, I know. We'll do it his way...