An advert on Gumtree for chairs for sale led me to a builder’s lockup in Lanarkshire. There were a lot of Ercol Quaker chairs in various states of disrepair. They’d been in there since 1986 and had cement, dust, dirt, spiders, tar, you name it, it was on them. I managed to squeeze 6 of them into my tiny car, they were a bit smelly and I had to drive back to Glasgow with the window down!

At home I had to wash them just to see exactly what I was looking at and what I would be dealing with to get them back to a good condition. These are the first 2 that I refurbished and I can say that Ercol chairs, no matter how bad a state they are in (these were as bad as can be), scrub up pretty well. These 2 had been in some sort of a bar room brawl many years ago and have had some repairs made to them. Rightly or wrongly, they were stripped down to bare wood, sanded and had Colron Danish Oil in ‘Clear’ applied to them, I was after a good durable finish with a sheen and this provided it. The colour of the wood is the colour of the wood, which was what I set out to achieve.

They sold within hours, as Ercol is in high demand here in Glasgow.