Hello! Let's talk about our dining room, and specifically, about chairs. Even more specifically, these incredible Eames molded plastic beauties. I have had a mad chair crush on these for years.

So, a few weeks ago, when one of our dining chairs broke, I treated myself to four of 'em. Ha. Just kidding. At more than $350 a pop, they weren't quiiiiiite in the budget. So let's back up a smidge. Do you remember our old dining chairs?

They were fine. You might remember that I bought them for less than $25 total, and then my mom helped me rehab them in her garage last winter. I had high hopes, but they more and more weren't really doing it for me. Quite a bit of my dislike had to do with how quickly the material I recovered the seats with got trashed.

Umm, ew. Of course, I just needed to recover them, but I was dragging my feet about it. They'd also gotten pretty beat up in the move, and I was pretty unsure how I'd repair them. It's one thing to spray paint a toothbrush holder on my rooftop, but hauling my chairs out there and resanding and spraying them seemed like I might be pushing it. So, when one completely bit it a month or so ago, I was secretly really, really happy. Sayonara, thrifted chairs. I looked high and low for new chairs, and I just kept coming back to my Eames. It was the look I wanted, at a price I could not justify. So I made peace with knockoffs and bought the cheapest ones I could find. I figure that imitation is the purest form of flattery...and once you're imitating, go cheap. So I got these off Amazon for about $40 per chair. Which is a slight savings of hundreds of dollars. They arrived, I put them together, and I put them at my table.

Once I got over the dramatic difference in height between the new and old chairs, I was diggin' it. I have no idea how well made they are, but in the few weeks that we've had them, I've really loved them. They're incredibly lightweight, which is really nice, because Lou can move them around, and they're easy to put on the table when it's time to Roomba. Still, this room was feeling a bit sparse to me, and I wanted to have more seating. So when I spotted some sleek chairs on sale for $30 at Ikea last week, I scooped up two in the black faux bois and brought 'em home. (Sale lasts until 12/22, btw).

I also brought back in the rug we'd swapped out of the living room (and which I just saw on the first season of How to Get Away with Murder, which I'm currently watching; there's also a character named Wesley on that show. #trendsetter). I bought a new runner for $6 at Ross because it's awesome, and a new cake stand from Anthropologie for the same reason. I then edited the bookshelves a bit and set up a little bar zone on one of the shelves, which I plan to spruce up and share before the holidays. All in all, I'm digging the direction we're headed in. Oh! And I swapped out the dresser in here for the one I'd had in Westley's room, and that made a huge difference!

Adding the two end chairs makes the table feel more formal and more complete, and the midcentury dresser in here had me at hello. I know why I didn't put it in here before (it fit with the foldout couch in West's room, which was important), but I am so glad it's here now! Who needs to unfold the couch all the way to sleep on it? No one, that's who. Form over function, every time. It's our new tagline.

What do you think? It's not done -- these are progress shots, peeps -- but like I say, I love where we're headed. Thanks for checking in and see you Wednesday!