Our Every Need

I'm very excited today. I got new chairs for my dining table. Well, they are actually used chairs, but they are new to me. And, we were in desperate need of new chairs.

1. Our old chairs were UGLY (that alone is not what constituted our need)
2. Our old chairs were falling apart. We had to check to make sure all the legs were relatively straight before sitting in them at risk of falling on the floor (THIS is what constituted our need).

The most exciting part about this purchase? They were $10 a piece at our local Reuzit store. They had 3 matching chairs. I would have liked to have had more, but this will do for now. We have 2 benches that we use at the table as well.

They aren't perfect, but they are better than what we had. And, my husband and I agree that we are in a stage of life where raising 4 rowdy, messy boys does not mix well with having new stuff. We would rather have nice-ish stuff that we're not worried about getting the inevitable scratches, dents, or stains than new stuff that we couldn't really LIVE with.

The really, really cool thing about this find is that I had prayed that God would help me find some decent, low-cost chairs quickly before someone hurt themselves by falling off a breaking chair. And, He provided! I had looked into buying new chairs from the local Wal-mart or K-mart and at $50 a pop, even that was a little steep for our current budget. I thought I'd probably have to wait until yard sale & auction season to find what I wanted. Then, I stopped in at the Reuzit store on a whim today, not really expecting to find anything. But, there they were.

It reminds me so much of last summer when our dining table was falling apart (the original match to our old chairs). I had considered buying new, but wasn't willing to spend hundreds of dollars on something my children would beat up. I prayed about it and a couple days later drove by someone's house where they had a cool table set out for sale for $20. The table was actually a pub-table style, but my husband just sawed off the bottom couple inches off the legs to make it regular table height.

I am amazed time and time again at how God provides our EVERY need.

Anyway, this is what the old chairs looked like.


These were the last surviving 2 chairs out of a set of 6 that went the old dining table which also bit the dust. Oh, and you get a really nice look at our 60 year old linoleum in these pictures...another household project waiting on time & money. (Our old farmhouse floors are completely uneven & slanted due to settling of the house. That needs to be addressed before we can replace the flooring.)





A closer look at the condition of the old chairs. Sorry about the sideways view.






Falling apart





The 'new' chairs. They aren't perfect, but they are much more sturdy. I'm not crazy about them having fabric seats (it's hard to tell in this pic, but the fabric is black). I usually like to have things that are easy to wipe off since we have multiple spills & such during the day.






I think they go with the dining table pretty well. Maybe someday I'll paint them or re-stain them.





These are the benches we have on the other sides of the table. These were yard sale finds from a few years ago. I had covered the tops with fabric, but as you can see they are already marked up & stained quite a bit.