My Dining-Room-Chair Saga

 The spindle chairs from the Portfolio Collection

Tea and Antique Glow finish

86C1-PF

The ones in the image are side chairs; we currently own three arm chairs

Almost a year ago, I fell in love with the wrong kind of dining room chairs - and by "wrong" I mean the discontinued kind. Oh, and the discontinued kind of chair that was broke too: They were made by Shermag, a furniture company in Canada that declared bankruptcy a few years ago. There's no hope that these spindle chairs, from the Portfolio collection, will ever be made by Shermag again. And it's really unfortunate, because I can't seem to find any chairs that I like as much as these.

We saw two of these chairs for sale at Sansaco, a furniture warehouse that used to be a dealer for Shermag. I convinced J that we could buy these two arm chairs and the table from Sansaco's clearance overstock, and that we would somehow find more side chairs or arm chairs to complete the set. After several days of searching, I finally was able to find a dealer in North Carolina who contacted the Shermag warehouse and got one more chair to send to us; it was the last possible chair in the same style, which luckily happened to be was the same finish as ours. So, now we have three arm chairs. (It only took seven months for the seller to finally get the chairs to us, but that's another story.)

For the past year, I have been trolling the internet on an obsessive basis, visiting Craigslist, eBay and Kijiji ads (to name a few sites) to try and find more of these chairs. I feel like I have visited the deepest bowels of the internet. Tonight I even found an auction listing for the multi-spindle boring machinery that Shermag had to sell after declaring bankruptcy. Anyhow, Shermag furniture rarely comes up for sale in the United States, let alone the chairs from the Portfolio collection.

In the process of searching for these chairs, I have unwittingly become an expert in different types of chairs that are done in a Shaker style. We have two-tone, high spindle back chairs that are topped with long finials. Our chairs are different from ladder back chairs, bird cage chairs, Windsor chairs, and arrowback chairs.

I have come close to getting more chairs twice, and both accounts were very recent. About two weeks ago someone in Ontario offered to ship four chairs to me, but she flaked out. And then, miraculously, a complete dining set with eight chairs happened to come up for sale last weekend in a town that is 20 minutes from our house! I was so excited! I couldn't believe it! I kept hugging J and jumping up and down. J says that he literally has never seen me so excited, and he may be right. I couldn't even get over the fact of how the ad was worded, because the seller was using the exact phrases and words that I commonly used to search for the chairs. (Yes, I was geeking out on many different levels.) It was meant to be! We waited with bated breath for a day and a half, hoping to hear from the seller, only to learn that the set was sold to someone who contacted the seller a few hours before us. We were too late.

I was so devastated - probably more devastated than I should be about something as silly as chairs. That night I curled up in the bed, lay under the covers, and moped. It wasn't just about the chairs, though. I was so sure that all my hard work - a year's worth of searching - was going to pay off in a single weekend. And then it didn't. As I lay under the covers, I reminded myself of the dangers of having expectations.

Before this point, I was convinced that we would be able to find either this chair, or a lookalike chair that is made by Klaussner, an American furniture company (shown on the right). Unfortunately, the Blosser collection by Klaussner (#987) is also discontinued. It's especially unfortunate, too, because I quite like the side board that they sell with this set. Why do I like things that are discontinued?!?

Now we are at a point where we are seriously considering getting some custom-made chairs. I want to move on with my life. It's quite difficult to find woodworkers who specialize in chairs - it really is quite an art. Do any of you know of woodworkers who specialize in quality, solid wood chairs? Or do you miraculously have three Portfolio or Blosser chairs that you want to sell to me? I'll pay good money for these chairs. As you can tell from this post, I'm desperate.