I have always loved Louis style dining room chairs, and someday upgrading our mismatched hodgepodge of different seating has long been on our wish list for the future. Over the years I've kept an eye out at furniture stores and antique malls but have never found a large enough set (3 chairs does not count!) or a price that was low enough to justify them. Until a couple of weeks ago. While scouring Craigslist for another project, I found a guy selling a bunch of dining chairs from a church that no longer used them and needed the extra space. Always up for a road trip in search of a great deal, Jady and I jumped in one of our church's 15 passenger vans and got on the road to Indiana.
The crazy thing is, by the time we arrived, our guy had discovered even MORE of them, so that all told we came home with 18 Louis chairs! And since he really wanted to get rid of all of them at once, we were able to negotiate a low price-- just about $30 a chair!
They are all in perfect condition and super sturdy, but they definitely need a makeover before they'll be ready for us to use. Since we don't have a dining room table or a dining room space that can seat 18 people, I'll be dividing the chairs up into groups-- 4 for the kitchen table, 10-12 for the dining room, and a couple for extra seating around the house.
Now we just have to pick a design! Not painting the frames and leaving them as they are would obviously save me quite a bit of labor... so it's tempting. But the light, yellowy wood isn't my favorite, so if we keep them as is I'll want to choose an upholstery color to downplay the yellow. What would you do? To paint, or not to paint?
xo
Liza
The original wood color of the chairs reminds me of either a restaurant at a golf course or the lobby of a upscale ski resort; in other words: industrial. I think since the condition is good the hardest part (sanding) would be "simple" (as simple as sanding can be, i hate that part). I love distressed/non-crisp look, but then I need all the help I can get to mask the damage my boys to do all my furniture. My favorite pic is the 5th up from the bottom.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely paint them! :-)
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