The Saga of the Dining Room Chairs

Our new house has a dining room.  I haven't had a dining room since I moved out of my parent's house.  Naturally, as someone who loves to cook for others, I was excited.  As a result of my parent's downsizing, I've inherited the teak dining room table that I grew up with, but I wanted new dining room chairs.  I've always been drawn to the idea of having modern chairs around a traditional table, like in this apartment therapy post:

Contemporary Chairs at Traditional Tables (and Vice Versa)

As soon as we moved in I started hunting for modern-looking dining chairs (which would hopefully stand out against the wood paneling.  Part of the quirky thing about this new house is that about 70% of is covered in wood paneling.  I'm slowly adjusting to this world of wood - it has given me the new project of creating a mod cabin style to fit our furniture.  I may have just made that term up.).

Er, anyway.  I liked several different kinds of chairs, all of them white.  I particularly had a crush on these white leather chairs from Crate and Barrel (more as inspiration than anything else since they were way out of our price range if we bought them new):

Crate and Barrel Folio Oyster Leather Side Chair

Alyse and I swung by Crate and Barrel to try these out and we both agreed they were very comfotable.  Trouble was, Ryan hated them.  And any other white, mildly modern-looking chair.  I must have shown him 15 chairs and he turned them all down - and I didn't want to buy furniture that my significant other was going to detest.  I was really hoping to buy second-hand, though, because I like the idea of buying what's already out there.  When I stumbled upon a set of chairs on craiglist that we both actually agreed on, I snatched them up immediately.

I am now the proud new owner of these dining room chairs, a fine example of vintage Danish Modern.

Photo Credit: simple huis

These are a complete departure from what I had originally intended, but I absolutely love them.  I'm also very pleased with the fact that they are unique, crafty, and vintage, which any of the other chairs would not have been.  They qualify as my first real furniture purchase (at least, my first real purchase which was not from Goodwill in order to furnish a less-than-immaculate college apartment).  Once I brought them home I did a little more googling about them (the craigslist post described them as Kosuga Dining Chairs) and discovered they were already famous!  Traci over at simple huis restored these chairs from their former paint-encrusted tackiness to the gleaming, tasteful example you see before you.  When she found them, they looked like this:

Photo credit: simple huis

 What an amazing difference!  Traci did an excellent job.  Her work was even featured on Design Sponge as an example of the value of a great makeunder.  Stay tuned for pics of my (hopefully fab) dining room, which will feature wood on wood on wood on wood (wood chairs, wood table, wood floors, wood paneling!).  Alyse and I have now been inspired to do our own makeunder/over furniture project in the near future.  To Goodwill!