Sage, Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

As loyal readers well know by now, we like to play a little game here from time to time called “Craiglist: Awesome or Terrible?” We realized in our many thrifting/bargain-hunting adventures that there can be a surprisingly fine line between the totally amazing and the too-weird, and so we like to find things that we think approach this line and get your votes on which side of this delicate balance our chosen items fall.

However, sometimes when we’re searching for items we can’t quite decide on, we find postings that require a moment of face-in-palm. Moments that make you ask, “if you are trying to sell this item, why did you advertise it this way?” Moments that make you actually want to email the person to give them feedback. Of course there will always be the odd person who is trying to sell a large dresser but doesn’t see fit to share the dimensions of said dresser in their posting, but we can chalk that up to a rookie mistake. Today we wanted to share a few postings that raise deeper questions, like “does this person really want to sell this item, or are they perhaps just doing this to get a nagging spouse off their back but as ineffectively as possible to hopefully not attract any buyers?” At the end of the post, we’ll ask you to pick the post that does the worst job selling what it’s trying to sell.

First up, there’s always the large number of people who photograph their items in incredibly low light. This person seems to have found quite an extreme, though. Even knowing it’s a headboard we still can’t really get our eyes to see it.

Though we don’t really need to see it for ourselves, as we’ve been assured that it’s in great condition.

Also in the dark photo category, there is this person who we’re really tempted to email and ask if they’re sure they want to sell their lamp.

It seems like maybe they really still need a lamp in this room….

Next up, we have an artsy, close-cropped image. We admire the creativity, but this does not seem like the time to play with perspective.

Speaking of perspective, take this ad for a roll-top desk, which is only for the “discriminating” buyer. We’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they meant “discerning,” which you’d have to be to figure out what on earth is in this photo.

And in case you thought one of the 4 other photos would clarify it…

Then there’s this person, who seems like they are valiantly trying to follow advice they read about photographing with something to indicate scale. However, a closed tape measure that itself could be a number of sizes does not make the most effective prop.

Why would they not extend the tape measure after going to all the trouble of putting it in the photo?

Another example of an odd item for scale is this water jug. At least, we have to assume that’s why it’s in the photo, since it certainly isn’t period appropriate.

Then there are the sellers who seem to assume we need to see an item in its true state to imagine it in our own homes…ie totally messy and covered with stuff.

Pro tip when selling on craigslist: you don’t actually have to clean your whole house — bloggers have succeeded for years in making their homes look perfect by moving the mess right out of frame (and we’re no exception). Just take literally 15 seconds to scoop that pile of clothes (shawls? blankets?) off the chair and throw them on the floor behind you.

We blame the new “unmade bed” trend in interior design photography for convincing people that they don’t need to make their beds. We’re sorry, sir/madam, but unfortunately you cannot take the same liberties as Anthropologie when you’re selling a used mattress.

And lastly, this one is not like the others but we just had to share because we are seeing more and more chairs advertised as plant stands. We get that you can use a chair as a plant stand, but it seems like a bit of an overreach to include that in its billing.

Or, at least list all the other things you could use it for…unique lamp table, unique clothes pile holder, unique place to stack unread mail, unique place for your cat to sit and stare at you menacingly, etc.

So which of these postings do you think is most successful at being unsuccessful?

It seems like a basic requirement for dining chairs: they should not break when you sit down in them. However, my dining chairs were not meeting even this baseline need.

I bought them on craigslist about a year and a half ago when I was trying to finish up the sunroom/dining room/kitchen renovation, and I picked them because they were inexpensive and low profile. I wasn’t ready to commit to more expensive chairs (and man, dining room chairs can really cost a pretty penny!), and I didn’t want anything with a high back since I thought that would look wrong in the space. Also I needed 5 chairs which is a hard number to come by, and so when I found some old captains chairs for $50 TOTAL I decided to go for it. I thought maybe I’d paint them and assumed I’d eventually replace them, but for $10 each it seemed worth the temporary measure.

I really did like them, but all of them had a few loose pieces that I just couldn’t fix. I tried gluing and clamping them multiple times, but they would always loosen up again such that when we had company over people would notice parts coming off and I thought tragedy was probably not far off.

For Sam’s birthday this spring we planned a dinner party about a month in advance, and I decided that I would have new not-dangerous chairs before then. What a concept!

However, I still wasn’t willing to pay an arm and a leg — I like chairs (not as much as Naomi does), but we just spent a good chunk of change on our basement floor update and we couldn’t splurge on chairs at the same time. I did a lot of searching in some affordable places like Target and Amazon. The strongest contender for awhile was this set of chairs from Amazon:

There were a few color options that I thought could work in my space, but ultimately I a) didn’t love the boxy silhouette, and b) could only get a set of 4 which left the big open question about what the heck I would put at the end of the table. I couldn’t figure out an affordable head chair option that coordinated but didn’t look like it was trying to be identical, and so I just sat on the whole thing for awhile.

A couple of weeks passed, and then I realized I needed to make a decision or I wouldn’t have something before Sam’s party. That would be a terrible reason to buy something I didn’t like, but sometimes when you’re slowly decorating a house it’s good to have some motivational deadlines.

I decided to check Target again, and that’s when I came across these chairs that I must have missed in my initial searches:

dining room chairs -- Plaster & Disaster

Unfortunately they now appear to be out of stock, but the beige and gray versions are still available

Okay yes they’re a tad on the derivative mid-century end of the spectrum, but I *like* mid-century, I liked the color (it would tie into our blue cabinets but not be too dark like some navy chairs I’d found), and they were on sale for $80/pair. I knew I’d need to buy three pairs and would have one chair left over, but even if you think of it as $240 for 5 chairs that’s still a pretty good deal. Sam said he “didn’t love them” but was fine with them as long as they were comfortable and *I* liked them plenty, so I decided to go for it.

Once they arrived they were super easy to assemble (just attaching the leg base to the chair body with four screws). I really like them, and we got enough compliments on them from our friends that I think Sam has been won over as well.

Sorry it’s hard to tell the true color in some of these photos — it’s ridiculous to complain about, but our sunroom gets so much light that it’s sometimes hard to photograph it without it getting too blown out. The top photo shows the color most accurately: a medium blue.

Murphy loves to sleep in them, so I’m glad that I got something light enough that the cat hair isn’t horrendously obvious (which I definitely thought about when I picked them). Here he is inspecting them for the first time, since I know you love cat photos: