Dining Chairs

How a dining chair is built, from padded seat to moulded shell:

the build decides where it wears out. A wooden frame with a padded seat carries a board wrapped in foam and fabric, screwed up from below, so the seat lifts out and can be recovered. A fully upholstered chair, the straight-backed Parsons shape or one with a tufted back, wraps the whole frame in fabric, velvet or faux leather and sits softer through a long Sunday lunch, but its cover is a job for an upholsterer. The polypropylene shell on wooden dowel legs, sold almost everywhere as an Eames-style chair, is light and wipes clean, which suits a breakfast corner by the kitchen. All-wood chairs and stackable steel ones are the plainest and the hardest to wear out.

Seat height, arms and the table they go under:

a dining chair has to suit the table more than the room. Sit down and check for a comfortable hand’s width between your thighs and the underside of the table, and that any arms slide under the edge instead of hitting it; a chair that cannot tuck in takes the floor a compact table was meant to free. Kitchen islands and bar counters stand higher than a dining table, so an ordinary chair at one leaves your plate near chest height. The other half of the set is under dining tables, and for a full working day at a desk, an office chair is built for the job and a dining chair is not.

Matched sets, odd chairs and the price of a new one:

bought singly from a furniture or department store, a dining chair runs from about Q300 for a moulded shell or a basic padded seat to around Q1,500 for solid wood or velvet. Used chairs are valued as a set far more than one by one. Six that match fill a table and move quickly; five plus one that nearly matches fetch noticeably less, because the same model is often gone from the shops by the time a chair breaks, and one fresh seat cover shows against five faded ones. A single odd chair goes cheaply and usually ends up at a desk rather than a table.

The back-leg joint and the screws under the seat:

between them they show how a used chair has been treated. Grip the top of the backrest and rock it firmly side to side with the front legs planted. Any give means a loose joint, and the first to go is nearly always where the back legs meet the seat rails, the joint that takes the strain whenever someone tips back on two legs. Turn the chair over: the corner blocks should be glued and screwed tight. Nails through a joint, metal angle brackets or squeezed-out glue are earlier repairs, and a chair held together with nails will need fixing again. On a padded seat, undo the screws and lift the board: a stained cover is an easy fix, a cracked or swollen board is not. On a moulded shell, look for hairline cracks where the legs bolt into the plastic and where the back curves up from the seat. Original Eames shells are made by Herman Miller or Vitra and carry the maker’s mark moulded underneath; without it, the chair is a replica and should be priced like one.

A set of chairs without its table:

is what most sellers end up with after a move to a smaller home or a new dining set, so put the count in the first line and say whether you would split the set. Photograph the chairs lined up in daylight, one turned upside down, and a close-up of the most worn seat rather than the best. Be honest about pets and small children, because fabric seats keep the evidence of both. Before someone drives in from Coatepeque or Salamá, tell them whether the chairs stack and whether the legs unbolt: many imported chairs arrive flat and go together with an Allen key, and a set with its legs off often fits in a car instead of a hired truck.