2023 Repair Cafe gets off to a good start
Sunday 8th January saw yet another eventful and successful repair cafe take place at Harland Works!
Starting off with an early success saw a DeLonghi coffee maker restored to working order using the tried and tested mechanism of taking it apart and putting it back together again! Worked for this item but sadly not for the iron that followed. Sometimes when there is nothing loose, broken or obviously wrong inside, it’s tricky for repairers to diagnose the fault.
A customer with a cute little dog in tow was reassured that a vintage ceramic table lamp is still safe to use after they’d noticed it making a strange buzzing noise. Turns out that vintage lamp fittings do not like modern energy-saving light bulbs, something I’m sure many of us can sympathise with!
As always the sewing corner was popular. Several clothing items were altered to the customers’ specifications, the seam on a gentleman’s jacket repaired and the zip on a canvas satchel bag was fixed. Although space in the cafe is tight we are looking to host two sewing repairers in future.
A beautiful Swarovski crystal decoration on which the crystal had become detached from the metal part was reattached so the owner was pleased to have such a sentimental item fixed and able to take pride of place on the shelf once again. A light-up Christmas decoration was saved from the bin after having the connections tightened and the parts glued into place to prevent them from loosening again.
Once again, Peter the bike fixer had a diverse range of tasks to get stuck into, involving looking at the stiff gears on a new bike that a child had received for Christmas, a dropped seat post on a mountain bike and some tinkering around with brakes and cables on a beloved vintage red bike!
We welcomed our newest repairer, Simon, who will be on hand at future repair cafes to sharpen knives, tools and scissors (as long as they can be taken apart). He did a fabulous job sharpening the cafe’s knives so we can highly recommend his skills. Please transport knives and sharp items safely and securely to Repair Cafe should you wish to bring any along to Repair Cafe in future.
Finally we would like to thank customers for their generous donations this week and, on that note, we were asked the very important question about what we do with any donations. Repair Cafe does not operate on a profit basis; it incurs significant operating costs including a hefty specialist insurance premium, plus energy costs and other consumables. We currently provide the volunteer repairers with refreshments and lunch and we would like to provide travel expenses in future if possible.
