Special settee raisers

The client, who uses a wheelchair, has difficulty getting up from her settee, as it is too low. Standard chair raisers are not suitable.

The subject settee is a 3 seater leather settee standing on 4 feet each 50mm high, the front feet are each 210 x 90mm tapering to 190 x 60mm each retained by 2 off 6mm x 65mm socket screws, which are counterbored 15mm deep. Rear feet are each 90mm square tapered again to 60 x 60mm, and retained by a single central 6mm x 65mm socket screw.

The interfacing structure comprises a plank running along the front and rear each approx 100mm wide of a light coloured softwood.

The solution was to fabricate spacer blocks 100mm high to fit between the settee and the original feet. The foot retention screws were replaced with SS threaded rod 165mm long, each screwed into the original fixing points with large washers and nylon insert nut locking the studs in place. The counterbores on each of the feet were opened out to ¾” and a further self locking nut with plain washer was used to tighten each extended foot in place.

The spacer blocks were fabricated from recycled timber, cut to size, drilled, planed and sanded to finish dimension and finished in a red mahogany stain varnish similar to the original feet.

Spacer blocks fitted