The Repair Shop’s expert craftsman Dominic Chinea has launched into yet another ambitious engineering project – leading to a somewhat chaotic video from his workshop
Dominic Chinea with his Repair Shop co-stars(Image: BBC)
“The pressure really is on,” says The Repair Shop’s Dominic Chinea as he embarks on a tough engineering project: “We’re going to blitz this Land Rover and get it hopefully running, starting, possibly driving.”
In a new video, Dominic adds that, as he’s still missing a few components, it probably won’t be fully running for a little while yet. Nevertheless, he says, he’s determined to move as fast as he can with the project: “I do feel like this video needs to come with a little bit of a disclaimer or a warning that it’s quite hectic,” he joked, while giving his YouTube viewers an update.
Explaining that he has overstretched himself a little, Dominic says: “I’ve got multiple jobs all over the place and I am jumping around with no time. I filmed as much as possible and I’ve tried to assemble it into some kind of video to make some kind of sense.”
He stresses that the heat is on: “I have two days to get as much done as I possibly can.” But nevertheless, Dominic adds, he knows that rushing a job can lead to disaster.
“Patience is so important at moments like this.” He says, “I’m so tempted to just reach for the biggest hammer and try and persuade these things off of the shaft. But that is how you damage things.”
Dominic doesn’t need anything in his workshop to suffer any more damage. When Dominic and his wife Maria packed up their house in Kent last year and moved to Cornwall with their dog Wendy, he admitted that weatherproofing the newly converted workshop would be a “pressure.”
The dramatic storms that thrashed the county in January made Dominic’s prediction all too real. He was left struggling to make urgent repairs before he could get back to work, all while attempting to complete the renovations for his farmhouse kitchen.
He said at the time: “The storm has caused a lot of damage, the workshop roof, various tiles and bits and bobs. I’m doing my best to deal with those, I’ve ordered more roof sheets and I’ve lined up roofers to try and fix the roof, but I’m also juggling trying to finish this kitchen.”
A month later, another violent storm caused a section of his workshop roof to collapse, inflicting substantial damage to a nearly irreplaceable vehicle he’d been restoring underneath.
Then, in June, Dominic’s workshop was hit by yet another apocalyptic storm. Somehow, amid all this chaos he’s managed to fit in the filming of two TV series.
His decision to put his life on screen with his new series Dom Chinea’s Cornish Workshop was by no means an easy one. “It was definitely different to filming The Repair Shop, but that was part of the reason to try to do it, to experience something new.”
And of course he’s still working alongside the rest of The Repair Shop team. In tonight’s season opener for Beyond the Barn, electronics expert Mark Stuckey restores a homemade K-9 dog, and leather expert Suzie Fletcher repairs a bag belonging to Winston Churchill’s cook.
Meanwhile, milliner Jayesh Vaghela undertakes the delicate restoration, determined to bring this unique piece of rock ‘n’ roll history back to life while preserving its authentic character and remarkable connection to the rise of David Bowie and the 1970s glam rock movement.