Please, Have A Seat...

My house is full of chairs. It's been this way for almost a week now. It took two trips with a 26' rental truck, two grown men, and an old lady (that would be me) to transfer over 250 task and conference chairs from a warehouse in Golden to the garage, two bedrooms, the dining room, two hallways, the living room, and part of the basement. This began with my son, Josh, looking at ads for short sales and talking about flipping a house. The next thing I know, we're flipping office chairs from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). And in case you think I am exaggerating, here is what the garage looks like this morning.

 And here is the front bedroom

The other guest bedroom

The breakfast nook

The dining room

The front hallway

And, finally, the living room

We started out with neat stacks in the garage, but as we cleaned and weeded out the broken and the nasty it came to more resemble the chaos that it really is. Josh bought one of those little upholstery cleaning machines meant for detailing your car, and has been giving it a workout every evening after he gets home from his primary job. My task is wiping down the "arms and legs and backs" to remove any grime left by the previous owners (I'm using Melaleuca's MelaMagic). After a dozen or so chairs, you try not to think too hard about what those hard little specks are that are stuck like bits of glue to the underside of the seat or the insides of the arms.

I have also been tasked with putting the ads up on Craig's List and following up on contacts. So far, we've sold seven chairs, and reserved three for our own use. Some of the chairs are fairly expensive to purchase and in practically new condition; but when the government builds a new building, they buy new furniture for it. I managed to snag a really nice leather one for my office (retails at $999), and Josh found one (retails at $699) to replace the chair he was using at work as well as a great little armless task chair for working in the garage.

We haven't yet broken even on the deal -- it will take another 14 or so chairs to do that -- but we have plenty of seating for company in the meantime!