Armchairs

Recliners, wall-huggers and the swivel rocker:

a standard recliner tips its back toward the wall as the footrest rises, so it needs a gap behind it of roughly a forearm’s length. A wall-hugger slides the seat forward instead and can stand a hand’s width from the wall, which is why it suits a small apartment. Push-back recliners have no lever; you lean back to open them. A swivel rocker recliner turns to face the TV or the window, rocks while upright and locks once reclined. The accent chair is the fixed armchair that fills the corner beside the sofa: lighter and cheaper, but it will never put your feet up. Recliners with two or three seats in a row are under sofas, and armed chairs for the table under dining chairs.

A manual or power recliner, depending on who sits in it:

the manual recliner with a side lever is the simplest to keep running. The lever pulls a cable, and when that cable stretches or snaps it is a cheap part to replace. A power recliner moves at the press of a button and stops at any angle, and a lift recliner tilts the whole seat forward to help an older person stand up. Power brings two catches: the chair has to sit near a socket, and in a power cut it stays wherever it stopped unless the model takes a battery pack.

The cedar or teak rocking chair from a Panamanian workshop:

alongside the imported upholstered chairs, workshops in Panama still make the wooden rocking chair by hand, in Spanish cedar or teak combined with leather, and often to order. A new handmade rocking chair costs around $150 to $190, less than most manual recliners on a furniture-store floor at about $250 to $500, with power and swivel-rocker models climbing toward $800. A solid-wood rocking chair can be reglued, re-varnished and given new leather, so a sound used one keeps much of its price. A recliner is worth what its mechanism is worth: once the footrest droops or the motor labours, a buyer weighs it against a new budget model and offers little.

Testing a recliner’s footrest, lever and motor:

sit in it and open and close it three or four times. The footrest should rise level, hold your legs without dipping and fold away with a push of the calves rather than a kick. A slack or stiff lever points to a stretched cable. Tip the chair forward and look underneath: the metal linkage should be straight, every bolt in place, with nothing scraping as it moves. Run a power recliner with someone sitting in it, because a motor that copes empty can stall under weight, and listen for grinding. A swivel rocker should turn and rock without a clunk from the base.

The runners and joints of a used rocking chair:

set it on a flat floor and rock it. It should roll straight and settle upright; a chair that creeps sideways or tips too far back has a warped runner. Grip each arm and push. Any give where the arm meets the back post means the joint needs regluing. Splits along a runner spread with every rock. Check the leather where it is nailed or laced to the frame, which is where it tears first.

Photographing an armchair upright and fully reclined:

buyers want to see a recliner both ways, so shoot it upright, then fully open with the footrest out. Give the width, the depth upright and the depth fully reclined, and say how far from the wall it has to stand. State whether it is manual, push-back or power, and whether every position still works. For a rocking chair, name the wood, photograph it side-on so the runners show, and say who made it if you know. Then tell the buyer whether the back lifts off: on many recliners it slides off two brackets, and that decides whether one person can carry it out to the car or it takes two people and a pickup.