Getting Low-cost Dining Chairs From Craigslist
We at last scored some chairs for the dining room, thanks to this craiglist ad emailed to us by our friend Sandra (muchas gracias!).
You are likely thinking: what are they thinking?! Parsons chairs? Yup, that is exactly what we have hoped since day one. Thirty bucks? Yeah baby. Weird green and blue swirly pattern? Um… no comment.
But since the price was right (we in fact bargained them down to $25 per chair, coming to $200 total for all 8) and the shape/lines were right (they are solid and quite well-made) we figured it was time to pounce (with some reassurance from a few online walkthroughs about dyeing fabric, making slipcovers, or reupholstering parsons chairs). So in the end we hope to end up with eight affordable and well made parsons chairs without this… uh… “unique” fabric. Hopefully sooner rather than later…
As for how we got them home, I borrowed my sister’s Explorer (since I knew we could not fit them in our Altima without making at least three trips) and drove 90 minutes round trip to Mechanicsville to pick up the chairs. I wish I’d brought the camera (or was fancy sufficient to have a decent cell phone cam) because the guy selling them lived on a giant horse farm, so the scenery was striking. And since Sherry and Clara stayed at home (to make room for more chairs in the car) I wished that I could have taken some photos so they could see it.
The guy selling them was a real character. I expected to pick up the chairs from his dining room, but instead he led me back to a bunch of large storage crates in his backyard (I must admit this is where craigslist horror stories began flashing through my mind and I wondered if I was being kidnapped). Then he rolled up the door to one of the storage crates to reveal that it was FILLED TO THE BRIM with these chairs. I never got the story behind how he ended up with so many, but my guess is that they came from some hotel auction or something. All that mattered is that they were in good condition (solid, sturdy, clean, no pet/smoke odors, etc) and that he was glad to let me put a dent in his collection and leave with eight of those babies.
Here I am back home with my booty (that is not a butt reference, I mean the chairs), cheesy pose and all (sometimes I defer to cheesy poses when Sherry runs towards me with the camera, you know, simply to humor her). And yes, I was extremely proud of fitting all eight of them into my sister’s car in one trip. There was even a call to Sherry where I told her I could only fit six so I needed to make two trips with a big fat “simply kidding!” at the end.
As a reminder, here is what the dining room looked like back when it was chair-less…
…and here it is now with eight new occupants. In fact only seven are pictured because Sherry likes that more breathable look for “everyday” (we can easily add in the eighth one when we need it – until then it is hanging out in our chaotic playroom with 99% of our other “extra stuff”).
We keep having to remind ourselves to look past the crazy pattern and enjoy the fact that we scored a serious deal on the exact style of chair (with clean lines and solid construction) that we have been eying.
The best price we have seen so far on any new parsons chair is around $85 (Pottery Barn sells similar ones for $299!), so as long as we can correct the swirly fabric for less than $60 per chair, we made the right call. Even if it means that our dining room looks a bit like a hotel conference room for the time being…
Sherry found a few online walkthroughs for dyeing fabric directly on furniture that we might try (although dye = scary, so we might skip right to the next step, which would be to make slipcovers or reupholster them in the crisp apple green color that Sherry has been dreaming of from day one). So that is the story of driving out to a farm and squeezing eight $25 chairs into my sisters car. Perhaps you folks have recent craigstlist deals to share? Or an “I cannot believe I got that to fit into my car” tale to tell?
