As if there isn’t enough going on around here, I have had my eye out for dining room chairs. Last year for Christmas we bought ourselves this epic dining room table for $100 on Craigslist. A dining set was supposed to be our Christmas present to each other. It came with 6 awful, ugly chairs that Jake succeeded in selling for $100 on Facebook Marketplace… Ha! So we ended up getting the table for net $0.
Sidenote—there are two lessons to be learned here… One: items on Facebook Marketplace sell at a premium over Craiglist. It’s just a much easier platform to use with way more people frequenting it. Two: know your season. Matching chairs get snapped up right before the holidays because everyone is anticipating have tons of family over for dinner.
Anyway, I had grand plans to ceruse it like this but in black, and get these IKEA chairs to go with it. But, plans tend to change. And right around the New Year is when we decided we were going to sell our house. Knowing you’re not going to be in a place much longer really puts a damper on furniture project motivation. So the table has remained as is.
Fast forward to the Hoarder House: once we had cleared out all the junk, we moved this table in. And oh, it just fits so perfectly in that space. It’s as if we planned it, but no! All we needed were some perfectly mid-century chairs to complete our dining set. Plus we were spending a lot of time at this table because all our other furniture stayed in the basement for a while during the demo and rough construction phase.
Every evening as I browsed the local CL and FB marketplace listings I casually checked for said MCM inspired chairs. Interestingly enough, I was looking for commercial or waiting room chairs because they tend to be inspired by the 1960’s clean lines and retro feel. And they are often sturdy enough to recover.
In my search I stumbled upon these suckers… for just $5 a pop. That is insane y’all!!!!!!! Again, these would’ve been gone in moments on FB marketplace, but thank goodness some old fashioned people still list their stuff on CL.
First off, how cool is it that they are chairs from a Parish? Talk about history! And, they are just so stinkin’ mid-century with the straight lines and the shape of the legs. I’m even kind of obsessed with those gold connector pieces. And, they had over 200 so I could get a full set of 10. Do you know how hard it is to find 10 matching chairs???
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So obviously I called the poster right away, because THESE WERE THE CHAIRS I HAD BEEN WAITING ALL MY LIFE FOR!!!
But…. He said they had all been sold…………………… *gah, update your listings people!!* So, I very sadly went back to the drawing board on my chair search.
Well, later that week I saw that not only was the listing still up, it had been renewed….. those sneaky snakes (why do I love this song so much?!?)… I called them again…
“Excuse me sir, are these available?”
“Why yes they are!”
*cue angels singing*
*rays of sun shine down from the heavens*
Glory be!!!!! I will have these chairs of my dreams!! So I sent Jake to pick them up straight away. Turns out there was a possible buyer for all 200+ of the chairs, but they were being a little flaky so the Parish let us buy the 10 and was saving the rest for the other buyer.
I feel like it’s safe to call this a miracle. Like total diving intervention right there. I seriously measure my blessings in Craiglist deals and this girl feels #blessed.
So, now that we have this drop-dead dining room set for a grand total of 50 smackeroos, it’s time to start planning how I will refinish it….
For the table, the jury is still out. I’m toying with the idea of a black stain using this method.
And I think I want to leave the wood finish on the chairs. One, it would be a ton of work to refinish them all, and two, I think medium toned oak is acceptable in small doses. So, the main updating I will do on the chairs is recovering them.
I ordered a bunch of Robert Allan upholstery samples from Fabric Guru (is he the only designer with beautifully modern and affordable fabrics?? Please share if you know of others). It was a tough decision to be sure…
I even tried some sad attempts at mocking them up, but let’s just be honest. This isn’t my best work, and it’s very hard to decide based on this hot mess…
Ultimately the last one was the winner. I ordered it on a 20% off black Friday sale and I am so excited for the statement it’s going to make!!! (And at least a teensy bit nervous too) We have so many whites in our space right now that I need to start committing to some colors and patterns.
I want to start on these puppies, but I’m wondering if I should wait a bit longer as the drywall dust is flying around here and I don’t want them to get ruined.
What do you think? Are you a CL ninja too? Any other fabric designers you like?