After much comparison shopping online and in person, I chose the IKEA Dockstra dining table and an IKEA Expedit 4x2 bookcase turned on its side for a buffet.
But as you can see the room is pretty bland right now. That's ok, because that's how I planned it. The color will come from the chairs, which I envision as IKEA competition. Why? Because instead of purchasing new on the cheap, I'm going to repurpose old (on the cheap, too, I hope).
I see this as a competition between IKEA, a responsible furniture manufacturer, and the combined forces of thrift stores, hardware stores, and sweat.
Today thanks to a tip from my neighbors I picked up two dining chairs for $10 each at a local thrift store. Score! Here's a picture.
My plan is to find 2-4 more chairs. There were some good candidates at the thrift store, but they all had plastic covered seats that I wasn't sure how to remove/swap out. The table seats 4 easily but can handle 6 in a pinch. I'm going to strip them down and I think paint each chair a different vibrant color: blue, green, red, orange, purple, etc.
To figure out how to do this I'm going to rely heavily on the clever folks at my local paint store, with some additional information from these links, courtesy of Google:
http://www.ronhazelton.com/howto/antique_chair_restoration.htm
http://www.curbly.com/celee/posts/152-Refinishing-wood-chairs
What prevents this experiment from being maximally crunchy? As I see it the variables are:
- Direct cost of materials, i.e. price
- External costs of materials, e.g. toxicity
- Cost of labor
I wonder if I'm forgetting anything?
The chairs I wanted to get at IKEA were Norvald dining chairs in red, for $69 each. Assuming I got only 4 that would be a total of $276 -- pricey!
I'll pick out paints for now, but I'll update on results later.
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