We got chairs for our table.  Finally.

Back in February we had this.  Nothing wrong with it but, it was beginning to not work for us.  I wanted to use the big end chairs upstairs and all the side chairs were driving me crazy. They were really heavy and a little larger scale than I wanted.  And these aren’t even the chairs that came with the table, all those were sitting around upstairs because unless I had both extra leaves leafs? in the table, those chairs were super wide and couldn’t fit under there easily.  So I sold them all on ebay and then wondered what I would find to replace them. I’m in no big hurry.

I had visions of doing something really creative like having all different style white chairs.  But, I really didn’t want to have to think about it and I wanted something easy.  So I went to Ikea.  Sometimes when I shop at Ikea I feel like I’m shouting “I’m out of good ideas” and “I Give Up!“, kind of like George Costanza and his sweat pants.

I brought home one Gilbert chair, it was $39.99.  And we lived with it for about a month along with some crazy chairs we pulled in from the garage and other places just so we’d have a place to sit.  Once we felt like the boys weren’t going to destroy the chair we decided to take the plunge and buy 3 more.  Then I sold that white bench up there.  Can you see it?  It’s on the left side of the table.  I like benches BUT, if you need them for table seating, they can become a pain if they have arms.

We ended up grabbing two Henriksdal chairs for the ends of the table. We chose the dark legs with the non skirted washable white cover.  I think the chairs were $49 and I know the slipcovers we got were only $10 each for a total of $59 per chair.  The skirted slipcovers are $30 each and all the covers come in various colors.  All in all, after selling my eight chairs and my bench, I had more than enough money to buy the six chairs.  I actually had enough left over to buy one more side chair…

…because look, even without that last extra leaf we could fit in another chair on each side.  For now I like the extra room but, I think I”ll eventually get two more chairs and use them at the homework table in our family room and if we need them we can pull them over.

All in all, I’m pleased.  We sold 8 chairs plus a bench that we’ve had for years and once I buy my last two chairs we will have 8 new chairs and it will have only cost me $40 when it’s all said and done.  And I can always go and buy skirted slipcovers if I decide I want them.  I’m really happy with the look and the room we gained and wow, I guess it’s not so bad to give up after all.