I'll Show You To Your Seats

I have a confession. For as much as I love antiques, I hate garage sales. Hate, hate, hate them. We have several "communities" that have big street wide sales around here. Ron loves them and has gotten Lauren loving them. She sees a sign while we are driving and starts begging to stop. Unlike those two, garage sales give me panic attacks. It must be the clutter and disorganization. (Or the load of 10cent crap that people put out!)

Now estates sales, on the other hand, are a completely different story. In NY, estate sales are whole house sales, usually after someone has passed away. And you go right in the house. (I have heard it isn't like that everywhere). Absolutely everything in the house has a price tag on it, and most of the people running the sales will deal on prices a little bit. (My Mom is particularly good at getting prices down.)

Some estates are better then others, obviously. On Monday, Jacob and I hit a really really really good one!! We were late to the party, though. Most of these have lines out the door at 8am and we wandered in at noon. There was this very unassuming little ranch looking home sitting there on a very quiet street. There were dozens of cars lined up and down the road. We we went into the house, we found out why. There was this gigantic gourmet kitchen. It was insanely cool. And everywhere the place was over flowing with collections of things.

I went down to the basement and among shelves and shelves of old sheet music, there was these old theatre chairs. There were five and I decided to take the best two. I was a good shopper and checked that the wicker was in tack (not a hole to be found), no chew marks on any of the legs, the seats move up and down well, and no rips in the leather. When I got home I tried google searching antique theatre chairs with no luck. Everything I found was the style that are wood and connected together. One friend suggested they might be Victorian. She said Victorians were big into their wicker. I would love to find out more about them. But, alas, I think the old man who's estate was being bought up took all that info with him.

Wanna guess how much I paid for them? Guess... come on... guess... $8 each. Seriously. $8.

I have big plans for these old chairs. They are going to be "a glass of wine" for my new living room. (Thanks again for that analogy Belvedere Beads!) I plan to give them a good scrub, clean the leather and reupholster the cloth backs. I have narrowed it down to one of three fabrics, all are from Anna Maria Horner's new Garden Party collection. Here are the choices: Turquoise Center Piece, Navy Centerpiece, or Navy Guest Of Honor. Then, when they are all dolled up, they will go under the window near the fire place in the living room.

*sigh* I love these old chairs.

Feel free to comment on what you think of my fabric choices. Give it to me straight... Ron already said he hates them, so I can take it. But you gotta try to have vision people. LOL.