The secret for finding anything under the sun for half price or less. Well, many things anyway.

Lately, it appears that several things have been breaking down at our house. We need to replace a whole bunch of stuff but the most pressing concern happened to be our dining chairs, which pretty much croaked under heavy use by my young kids and our heavy partying (okay, just kidding there).

We had to resolve this problem quickly as we were running out of chairs quickly, with seats succumbing to wear one after another. The tricky thing about this was that we wanted to preserve the perfectly fine solid wood dining table that we were using. This meant that we had to find chairs that fit the existing table in size and style. What to do?

Step One: Went Online and Google Searched

I’m the closest to what you may call the “shopper” in the family, so the first thing I did was to (quite obviously) check on the web for “dining chairs”. Seems straightforward enough, but the basic idea here was for me to determine the ballpark pricing for what we were looking for. Sounds easy right? Well let’s see how it went: I quickly found web sites that popped out hundreds of chairs of various appearance and price. I also easily established that the going price of online dining chairs that appealed to us was hovering at over $100 each. And just for your basic nondescript chair with built in seat cushion.

Well those prices were just NOT going to work. I was starting to worry as the search for the right items to match an existing piece of furniture (e.g. the table) is a challenging feat as we were aiming for some furniture compatibility and aesthetics. Now throw in the “right price” into this mix and it becomes downright impossible to achieve this task in good time.

Step Two: Contacted Local Furniture Store: Hoot Judkins

I then decided to give Hoot Judkins a call as we had bought some nice wooden pieces from them in the past. Again, I worried over their inventory, wondering if they had enough to choose from. And prices weren’t any better either. So I went on to consider my last resort — the site for used stuff — before resigning myself to paying over $800 for all these chairs.

Step Three: Went To Online Classifieds Site: Craigslist

Desperation was creeping up my neck. I thought about my favorite shopping spot for amazing deals: Craigslist, an online classifieds site that us folks from the Bay Area fervently use like it was our very own eBay. Craigslist is great because you can get big things for good deals and not have to worry about shipping since it’s completely local. I just wasn’t confident I’d be able to find the EXACT chairs I aimed to find as I was looking for smaller sized seats to fit our smaller space, and I preferred to pick up around eight of them to make sure I had spares.

I sifted through pages and pages of dining sets and chairs.

First, I saw what sellers euphemistically called UNIQUE dining chairs. What this really means is that there’s something different or unusual about your set, like if chairs have mismatched colors which some refer to as the “farmhouse” style.

Unique Chairs 2 Unique Chairs 1

Then I waded through ANTIQUE offerings…

Antique Chairs 2 Antique Chairs 1

and VINTAGE chairs, which actually means that you’ll need to give it some TLC in order to restore the items to their former glory. Or maybe you’d like to buy the stuff for their added character.

Vintage Chairs 2 Vintage Chairs 1

But waddaya know? After eyeballing lists upon lists of people’s used merchandise, I stumbled upon an ad for a set which I thought could work out. I crossed my fingers and paid the seller a visit and just like that it was one of those “buy at first sight” moments. I forked over $400 for 10 upholstered chairs in great condition and was thrilled my search was over (the seller was nice enough to let me take the chairs without the matching table). Yeah, that’s a super value of $40 for each solid, nicely finished piece that reasonably complemented our style.

Best Chairs 1 Best Chairs 2

The chairs sit well with my decor, and I now have a lot of spares for when I have larger parties.

The moral of this story: If you can’t find what you’re looking for at a given price, don’t give up on USED STUFF! There’s a treasure trove of neat stuff in online classified ad sites, consignment stores, forums or estate and garage sales. Perseverance has its rewards! So far, this strategy hasn’t failed us yet.