Outdoors Chairs Meant for An *Indoor* Dining Room

And now for a little chair-related riddle: What sucks more than buying eight chairs on craigslist only to realize that they are truly truly not working after a year and a half of trying?

A: Buying eight chairs on craigslist only to realize that they are truly truly not working after a year and a half of trying while you journal about it to the world at large. Haha. But you know we like to keep it real, so here is the unfortunate chair lesson that we had to learn through trial and error. And boy were there trials. And errors. But you win some and ya lose some when it comes to making your house a home. So if at first you do not succeed, try, try again. And again. And again. Haha. The good news is that this whole journey into home-making has a glad ending, so let us skip to the lively part:

But wait. We are getting ahead of ourselves. First let us flash back to the whole struggling-to-make-our-original-eight-craigslist-chairs-work rundown:

• First we found our $25 craigslist chairs and snatched them up – even though we hated the crazy hotel fabric
• Then we hunted down some inexpensive slipcovers at World Market (score!) but they were too big (boo!) so we tossed them into the dryer and they shrunk up and fit a lot better (score!).
• Then we dyed them a pleasant mocha color in the hopes of letting the dark teal backs of the built-ins do their thing (the original off-white tone clashed with all of the white trim and the built-ins in person).
• Then we lived with them a bit and learned that they got baggy and messy looking after a week or two of washing them (boo!). Although they snapped back into shape whenever we washed them again, it was more maintenance than we initially thought (boo!).
• So I in fact tried painting one of the chairs a glad apple green using textile medium (epic fail!).
• Then I tried spray painting them (knowing I could simply toss the brown slipcovers back on if it did not work out, so I did not have much to lose). They were sleeker than the baggy slipcovers thanks to the tighter lines, but the swirled pattern showed through in texture, which was a little less than ideal.

I in fact ended that spray-painting post with this somewhat deflated statement: “As for how we feel, we are still sort of on the fence. They are certainly better (muuch better) than the green painted chair debacle. And in person we think they are marginally better than the baggy slipcovers. But we will likely recover or replace them someday down the line. There is likely a lesson in here somewhere about how $25 craigslist chairs might not consistently be the answer if they have a crazy pattern and do not fit typical store-picked up slipcovers. Ah well, live and learn.”

In other words I took all of my crazy out on those poor hopeless chairs. Then I gave them the silent treatment for a few months while slowly growing more and more frustrated with them. Eventually we faced the they are-simply-not-working music and said things like this and this to folks who asked about them. And the good news is that the fifth (eighth? I have lost count) time is the charm! The key was not saving those chairs and desperately trying to make them work, it was setting them free.

We are planning to craigslisting the old folks in the hopes that someone who is much better at reupholstery than we are will be interested (they are a strong classic shape, but the fabric has to go) so we will keep you folks posted on what brave soul wants to keep giving these chairs a chance at survival.

But now let us talk about the new chairs! They were in fact a truly good deal (simply $62 a pop) and best of all, we enjoy them simply as they are. No more chair-speriments. At least in this room. The larger/cozier chair idea in fact hit me one night while thinking about casual and especially comfy dining room setups like this one from West Elm and this one from Ballard Designs:

Why do our chairs need to be compact and why do there need to be eight of them? What if there were six big armchairs around the table? We still have seating for an additional four people at the peninsula (literally three steps to the left of the table) and if our family gatherings eventually get so big that we need to seat more than nine or ten people, we can consistently set up a kids table in the office since the middle of that room is clear (and that is simply three steps from the dining table in another direction). Plus seating for six in our first house’s dining area worked for the 4.5 years we lived there, so even simply the four extra spots at the peninsula will be gravy.

So then I was on the hunt for armchairs, but because I worry about children (& even adults) with a whole bunch of fabric + food, I had this quite specific hankering for something wicker or woven. Simply to add more texture and not have fabric that I have to worry about staining. The only bummer is that most wicker armchairs are in the $200-300 range a pop (like these $319 options from Ballard Designs, and these $299 ones from Pottery Barn). And then I found these. Four of them for less than the price of one of those others! And angels sang. Wait, that was simply Clara in the background doing her Katy Perry impression (in case you are wondering, if you ask her who her go-to singers are, they are listed as follows: Katy Perry, The Chipmunks, Adam Levine, and Barney).

Guess why they were so marked down? They are in fact outdoor chairs! And it is the end of the season so they were on especially clearance. I was truly nervous to buy two 4-sets of them sight unseen, but I read that:

• I could return them to any Target store instead of having to pay to ship them back if they did not work
• By using our Target credit card the shipping was fully free
• Also by using our Target card we’d score an additional 5% off (wahoo!)

So it felt fairly risk-free. Thank goodness, because at this point I am suspicious of chairs having unforeseen issues. Haha. Oh and getting eight of them would mean that we’d have two extra chairs we would not need, so we could craigslist them, hopefully for $62 each since they’d be new/in the box and there are far uglier outdoor chairs on our local CL for $75 (so although we’d have to buy eight, we hopefully will not lose any money getting those extra two by reselling them, and the per-chair cost will stay at $62). Update: Plenty of folks are suggesting that we keep the other two for our deck or patio, which was certainly our first instinct, but we tried them in a few places and felt like we were forcing them, so we’d rather sell them and save up/wait for something that could work better in those outdoor spaces :)

Then we crossed all of our appendages and knocked on wood while waiting for them to come (which makes Burger bark enthusiastically, btw – more on that here). And huzzah! They are excellent! They make me want to sit cross-legged at the table for hours and draw with Clara (done!). I think they’ll be strong for doing homework with her and stuff (they are kind of cozy like an armchair) and I cannot wait to have a big family dinner with the grandparents and John’s sister so we can all sit and chat for a pleasant long time in them (who am I kidding, I have a toddler, I will be running around while they sit and chat).

Here is a shot of John relaxing in one. We are so glad they are comfy and the right height for the table. Whew.

Another strong thing about them being outdoor chairs is that they have these strong little durable seat cushions (they are made to work outside, so they certainly can handle spills and wipe-downs – they in fact feel impervious, like most things should bead up – which’ll certainly come in handy).

I will keep you posted when it comes to how these babies wear – and how they work for homework, drawing, and hosting bigger dinners with the fam. So far they’ve been excellent for our little crew (they’ve already passed the Play-Doh test). The coolest thing is that because they are outdoor chairs we can literally bring them outside and spray them down with a hose if need be.

And I sort of enjoy how everyone gets arm rests. It is like we are all sitting at the head of the table, which is kind of fitting since a round table does not have a head.

We are so thankful. Seriously, I thought we’d never crack this chair code and in 2040 we’d still be blogging something like “so we cryogenically froze the chairs and we think that’ll work! Fingers crossed!” Why is it that failing a few times sometimes makes the simplest accomplishments feel monumental? We at last got dining chairs we enjoy nearly two years into living here! Somebody strike up the band!

Here is the view from the kitchen. We enjoy how the slatted wood stools and the woven dining chairs work together without feeling too matchy. They both bring a pleasant texture and warmth to the rooms without feeling overwhelming (since having so many seats in two adjoining rooms could easily get crazy-competey-looking).

And so ends the epic 2010-2012 Chair Olympics that we hosted at our house. Sure, we lost the first six events (and you have to hand it to us, we truly bombed a few of those times) but I might simply be found standing on one of these chairs raising my fake gold medal up and glad-crying at the crowd. So it pays to keep at it until you at last get those “this is IT!” butterflies… even if they do not come straightforward. In the end, we are simply glad that we did not have to spend 1K on a bunch of chairs, which was certainly our fear ever since we got our big ol’ table – but even with the loss that we took on those first ones (including all of our desperate attempts to save them) our total spent is still a few hundred less than that… and will hopefully be even less when we craigslist them. I think we simply had to try the parson’s chairs and live with them to learn that we did not want to live with them. Haha. It is like how you have to get that glittery purple eye shadow to learn that no (NO!) it is not gonna work, and you should likely try something else.

What oops moments have you folks lived through lately? Any other furniture switchouts or upgrades going on? Between our new kitchen stools and these folks we have deemed this phase of home-making: “turning a corner.” It seems like we are at last refining things, working out little nagging issues, and bringing in more texture & natural tones (which we enjoyed in our first house) to mix with the pops of color that we have fallen more in love with since moving into our current house. It is in fact fairly normal for us to take a year or two to get our bearings, so needless to say, it is fairly lively to be making those “that is it!” tweaks in a few rooms that we use all the time. We knew we’d get there someday. Never mind those five other untouched rooms that we have yet to start. Haha.