Julian Bowen Hudson Set of 2 Dining Chairs, Black

Really nice, sturdy, good quality chairs
I recently (18 months ago) bought a new, smaller dining table and got four chairs that came with it. As you’d expect from free chairs, they were not great quality and I noticed after sitting on one for a few months that the seat had sagged and the wooden frame was detectable at the back. I turned around whilst sitting on one a few months ago and heard a load crack. The chair leg had caught in the carpet and broken at the top.

I found these Julien Bowen ones in a brown faux leather and at around 70 for the two, they seemed a good replacement although I really only wanted the one at the time. They sat in the box for a few months until this weekend when I decided to put them together.

They were SO much nicer than the free ones, that I realised they would put the latter to shame. They were taller at the back and slightly bigger and heavier, so I had to bite the bullet and buy a couple more, which thanks to Amazon Prime, arrived the next day.

I noticed on closer inspection that the free chairs were just faux leather stretched over a plastic (yes that’s a plastic) seat and the plastic had cracked on three out of the four chairs showing me that the only reason they were not yet sagging like the broken one was because they had barely been sat on.

The Julien Bowen chairs are very stable and well upholstered and although, if you look underneath they look a little bit rough, they are all together more solid and well put together and they look 100% better that my old ones.

They were relatively easy to put together but I would not build them in the order they suggest as the first chair took me an hour to build as I had to take it apart and start again, twice. Once I knew where it was going wrong, the 3rd, 4th and 5th chairs only took 15 mins each. You can follow these instructions if you want a less hassle build:

1. Sort the screws into the three sizes needed and load a nut and washer onto each before you start screwing anything in.
2. Attach the chair seat to the back using the Allen key, the two shorter screws and the four longest screws but don’t tighten any of them until you have them all sitting in the right holes. If you tighten the first two, the last four won’t go in and vice versa.
3. Once they are all in and tightened, screw the front legs on using the last four screws, nuts and washers and tighten.

The instruction tell you to put the front legs on the seat first but if you do this they will just get in your way and hamper your efforts to tighten the other six screws and you’ll regret doing it that way. Also instruction do not warn you what will happen if you tighten any screws before the others are sitting properly in their recesses.

If you choose to buy these chairs, you won’t be disappointed and good luck with the assembly.