Why do we even have a death chair?

For the past many Tuesdays I have been hosting a work meeting around my dining room table.  For 80% of those meetings, I had to keep stopping people from sitting in what we affectionately call “the death chair”.

Okay, perhaps not “affectionately”.

This is the death chair:

It’s from Ikea and it’s $20.  I had a set of two for /years/.  And was amazed by how sturdy they were for $20.  So when we got our big old farm table and needed an interim chair solution, I was like “oh oh! I know what chairs we should get!”  (If you think during a conversation with my husband I do not actually jump up and down and wave my hand and say “oh oh!”, think again).

Sadly, as is so often the case, the interim solution’s time frame… extended.  We are now entering year 3.

The original pair are holding up fine.  The “new” ones?  Not so much.

Not so much in the sense that at least 3 of the 4 have each at one time or other made a resounding “CRAAAAAAAAACK!” noise when someone was sitting on them.  Causing that person to leap out of their chair.

Only the chair didn’t actually “break”.  Not… completely.  None of them did.  They just get fracture lines.  A split appears across the back brace.  When that happens, we sit in the chair tentatively for a few weeks… a few weeks turns into a few months, and a few months turns into me sitting in one right now, rocking on the front legs, totally forgetting that it really could probably go at any time (maybe I have some self-loathing issues I’m not in touch with).

So, technically it’s not actually “the” death chair anymore (though there is a patient zero one we really worry about), but the death chairs.

You pay $20 for a chair, you get what you pay for.  I was hoping we’d also get the “…but sometimes you get a deal” clause.  No such luck.

And so Christmas approaches, and we’re having a big pile of people over to our house.  And we are reexamining our extensive collection of death chairs.

Finger crossed beloved friends and family.  If we find a deal, we will have replaced the interim solution with a leather bench, or some other frou frou condo furniture.

If we don’t, and you see these:

… around the table, don’t believe a word I say about how they’re “fine” or how “we tested them”.  Given the chance, the death chair will kill you and everyone you care about (actually, if they all give out simultaneously during Boxing Day dinner, that’ll literally be true).

God bless us every one.