The Repair Shop's expert Chris Shaw narrowly avoided a major mishap during the most recent episode of the BBC programme. On Wednesday night (February 12), audiences met two sisters hoping to restore a deeply sentimental item. Amy Bird and her elder sister Lottie Blunden arrived at the workshop with a book their parents had crafted for Lottie as a Christmas gift in 1976 when she was just three years old. Lottie shared: "Mum wrote it and Dad illustrated it. It's my most treasured possession still to this day.".
The book chronicled her life from birth until she was slightly over three years old. As Chris leafed through the book, he described the photos as 'delightful', particularly those capturing the significant moment when younger sister Amy was born, reports Gloucestershire Live. Their father died in 2014, making the book even more precious to them. When Chris asked about what they wanted done to the book and why they chose to have it repaired now, Lottie responded: "I think it's so tatty now. Pages are coming out because we just had this book out so much.".
"It just got water over it and marks on it and things. I suppose, especially now that Dad isn't with us, it just feels really important to preserve it for our family and the future generations of our family.". After the sisters left the barn, Chris explained to viewers his initial plans for the book, saying: "I've noticed this out cover has been covered in sticky-back plastic. What it restricts me to do is sort out any of these stains. So, in the ideal world, I would like to remove the sticky-back plastic.".
But things didn't go quite to plan for him. At one point during the show, Chris had to abort his first approach when he realised it was going pear-shaped. To the audience, he confessed: "Intention good, bad decision. So, by removing the sticky-back plastic, in fact, it's removed some of the colour from the back cover. "If that were replicated on the front, it would be a total disaster. Basically, I'm stopping removing of the sticky-back plastic because it's too risky!".
The crafty restorer remained upbeat, revealing his contingency plan, adding: "The positive side, I can table this stain here and then obviously re-colour the losses that I've taken out. Then I can reinstate some stick-back plastic to the correctly width and you're not going to notice what I've done.". Dodging a potential calamity, when the siblings came back to collect their item, they were astounded by the improvement. Flipping through the rejuvenated pages, they marvelled at its renewed firmness.
