Looky! Looky! LOOOOOOKEEEEEEE!

That? Is FOUR MATCHING CHAIRS!

(Yes, that did indeed deserved all caps.)

FOUR MATCHING CHAIRS!

Ever since we moved, the craptacular chairs we had in our kitchen have been driving me nuts. No, NUTS. Absolutely NUTS.

They never bothered me at our old house. I assume that's because the table was always so covered in assorted debris that you couldn't actually see them. Now that we have enough space to co-exist with the debris, the table stays clear. (That fact right there deserves a parade.) Suddenly, the realization that the chairs were beaten to a pulp mattered. A lot.

I don't do regular price, so back when I was first looking for a table and chairs for our old dining room, I started out by looking at a local antique store. Except, the antique store is more like a flea market--the old ladies who own the place buy truckloads of junk at estate sales and sell it as is in their store. I have frequently found stuff there that was hugely under-priced. It always involves some elbow grease, but it's worth it.

That table, for example, was a SCORE. I paid $35 for it several years ago. It needed a little Mr. Husband Magical Mojo to undo a bad stain job, but it was so totally worth the effort. A few months before I found it, I watched a relative (who had money to waste) spend thousands on a nearly identical table at a "real" antique store, so I kinda knew what I was looking at. It's an antique English pub table. It has a near twin on ebay right now for $2900.

I rule the bargain shopping universe.

The only problem with my Masterful Table Purchase was that I couldn't find chairs to go with the table. Anywhere. I didn't care if they matched, I just wanted them to not cost a kajillion dollars. (Actually, I kinda like when chairs don't match, just so long as they somehow go together.) Apparently chairs are filled with diamonds and gold because all the chairs I found were crazy expensive.

CRAZY expensive.

Eventually we found two battered and bruised chairs at a furniture outlet. Several coats of paint, a few pounds of wood glue, and a few pieces of fabric later, they were . . . OK. No matter how much fixing we did, if you paid attention, you could see that the chairs had been broken. It didn't bother me mostly because I was too cheap to care.

Fast forward several years and those chairs were stained, chipped, worn, and only slightly better looking than what you would find at a college frat house kitchen. Add in the fact that I had acquired a cheap, mis-matched third chair from IKEA (which Cody had gnawed on like it was a t-bone steak or something), and it was sad.

So, I started looking for new ones. And, guess what? Chairs apparently are still made with diamonds and gold because they are still crazy expensive. I couldn't find any that I was willing to buy.

But, Mr. Husband did.

At Target.

On clearance.

$17 each.

Woooohoooooo! FOUR MATCHING CHAIRS! For cheap!