I love a comfortable and sturdy, casual wood dining chair, but not too tall or wide like many chairs I come across while hunting in stores. I needed six to place around our French bakery style dining table. Our dining space is right next to the living room and small. Years ago, in our former house the space was huge so I used six upholstered dining chairs around this same table. They were beautiful but not French and also quite large. This time for the townhouse, I felt real country French wood dining chairs would be appropriate and antique or used would be even better.
Here is our dining table with a base made to resemble an antique French bakery's table. The top has a veneered painted green and beige French harlequin pattern on it.
I first saw and fell in love with this table in 1985 while browsing thru Suniland, a former fine furniture store in Houston, which is now a Louis Shanks. During the 1980s, I use to browse thru fine furniture stores a lot, dreaming of purchasing items to own in the future. It wasn't until 1997 when I actually was able to afford this table and even better it was on clearance, but sadly for a "going out of business sale" at Interiors of Austin, another former fine furniture store in Texas. Many beautiful fine furniture stores have permanently closed their doors and bit the dust, sniff.
While reading many DIY and decor blogs, I have seen many bloggers finding wonderful used dining chairs for their homes and hobby businesses. I also have admired many gorgeous antique dining chairs on interior design blogs. Oohing and awing over many photos gave me the idea to start searching for a set of my own. Knowing the measurements needed and style (country French) desired, I began playing a game of looking online through auctions and various sell sites. Eventually my winning moment came as I found the set of solid oak French chairs pictured below on the eBay store From Continental To You and yelled... BINGO!
(all the above chair photos taken by the eBay seller)
From Continental To You is a Belgian business that specializes in selling used European furniture and antiques that they call the "Craftsmanship of Generations." They have a warehouse in Fairfield, Maine that holds their eBay store items that are sent to the USA. Working with them has been such a pleasurable experience.
While waiting for the chairs to arrive I debated painting them using ASCP French Linen, or Pure White and adding a distressed aged wax finish. I would be recovering the seat cushions with either a French toile du jouy or a check fabric to keep my French Country in Texas theme going. Then I began to feel I might ruin these chairs and convinced myself to not buy the materials for the paint job and WAIT until they were actually sitting in our home, to decide. Of course I didn't use that good sense to do the same about fabric and impatiently purchased some yardage in both a toile du jouy and a check, grrrr.
The next photo was taken last week on the morning they arrived. I must mention the fellas in Maine packed them extremely well. Though I liked them, there was something that really bothered me and made them seem as dull as this photo taken using my iPad. I went to work afterward thinking...YES, paint them!
But, two days later I began to worry about ruining them again. They are from France, were made during the 1930s and are in MINT condition. They are very sturdy and very comfortable. I liked them but something was bugging me, so I asked my wonderful hubby if he thought I should paint them. He said nope, the wood was too nice and we need something with stained wood showing around here. I usually paint everything.
On Saturday morning I figured out what was needed and got another bright idea!
The chair on the left is as they arrived, with a beige velvet that is the wrong shade for the dining table and too dated looking for me. Now you can see why a said grrrr earlier on buying fabric yardage in both a French toile du jouy and a check pattern. My bright idea caused me to use NEITHER! What a waste of money. I decided a natural linen was what these chairs needed. I have plenty of that hanging around this camp! This beautiful linen is backed for upholstery use and the application process was a snap since the seat cushions just pop out.
Here they are, all recovered. That is my sewing machine covered to the left, on the floor. The truth is I have been using our dining area as a work room since we moved in. It is usually a mess. Hubby can't wait until I am finished with projects so our place can actually be neat and tidy as in these pictures, lol. Plus, I can't wait until next spring when we finally have the herringbone hardwood floor.
Here is a close up under the table...
Now I LOVE them! They are for casual dining, country French and the right size for the space. Next up will be placing two candles on the candlesticks and filling the centerpiece with some type of succulent plant, or maybe hydrangea flowers that can dry out. I painted all three of those thrift finds. I will also work on getting the two paintings on the wall finally framed. It has only been since 2003 that they were commissioned. Yeesh, I am sometimes slow as a snail on getting things done.
If you are hunting for "Craftsmanship of Generations" furniture pieces from Europe be sure to check out From Continental To You on eBay from time to time.
Till next time
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Enjoy the hunt!
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