The furniture search

 

I will try not to be obnoxious about this. I know how I've scoffed at other people who were whining about HAVING to go pick out new furniture/carpet/whatever and how hard it was to decide, while I was unable to do those things and wished that I could. So let me just preface by reminding you that we've been married for 11 years, and 8 of those years were spent in school, being dirt poor. This year when we got our tax return, we decided to use some of it to finally replace our kitchen table and chairs, which were given to us (used) when we were married and we'd outgrown.

So.

I'd been searching for the perfect chairs for I dunno, years. I finally found these Carey light blue dining chairs from the Threshold collection on target.com and was in love. That was 22 weeks ago. (I know because I pinned them onto my Home & Garden Pinterest board and it keeps track.) The stars aligned about two weeks ago and I scored with them being 15% off (normal price is $119 for a set of two), and I got free shipping--which Target doesn't usually do with furniture. :D So I saved about $100 with those two things. SEND ME SIX, I said. Shwoo, it was exciting!

Even more exciting was when they showed up only three days later.

 

Squee!!

 

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Mark assembled them and we were in business. They are very big and sturdy.

 

  Handsome Luke, handsome chair.

I had a lot of people ask if I'd painted the chairs, and if so, what color. I went through my paint chips, and even went to Home Depot and got every color that looked close, and could not find an exact match. (By the way, these chairs also come in black, white and red.)

 

 The closest ones I found that were in the same tonal family were Geyser and Artesian Well by Martha Stewart. It's probably a mix between the two. It is a great color.

So now we needed a new table. It was comically small with those chairs!

I really wanted a solid white table. I had been searching online for months. The only one I'd ever seen was from Ikea--their INGATORP table. I had seen it in person when we went to Ikea in California last year and took a picture of it and really liked it. So the original plan was to borrow my dad's trailer, drive up to the nearest one in Draper, UT, which is three hours away, and just buy it and drive it back. (To order from their website would have cost $350 in shipping--I'm not kidding.) I also liked their STORNÄS table and had that in mind as a second choice.

Mark had gotten Friday off of work and we planned on driving up. Then our plans hit a snag when Madelyn's best friend's birthday party was going to be on Saturday, and she really didn't want to miss it. Plus we had to take into account it was going to cost about $100 in gas, and $100 in lodging and food to go up there. We decided to have a look around the furniture stores in St. George to see if we could find anything we liked before booking our trip.

The first place we went to was Down East Home, which sells surplus stuff from fancy schmancy places at a discount. This was the first table we saw when we walked in. I liked it--it was similar to the Stornas Ikea table--but it wasn't white. They did however have some FABULOUS couches.

 Mark and I loved pretty much every piece of furniture we saw in that store. Oh how we want new couches! As a matter of fact, we were all piled onto our couch last night and then heard a big CRUNCH (which is never good) and part of the wood on the front of the couch had just broken. Sigh. So when we scrounge some more money together, we'll probably go back and get something there.

Anyway, we decided to keep looking. If I remember correctly, we next went to Ashley Furniture, The Boulevard Home Furnishings, Tai Pan Trading (and a stop for dinner at Durangos, mmm), across town to Passport Furnishings, which had just closed for the night, then to Oak Express, then to Target, Ross, Pier 1 and TJ Maxx. We got home at 9:30 pm empty handed and exhausted. Every store we went to had the dark/overstuffed/oversized trend still going on. Not to mention the prices were in the thousands.

And then stuff like this. Really? REALLY?? There were sales people prowling around and we got the heck out of there as fast as we could.

Finally I decided to check on Craigslist, but didn't have my hopes up because normally it's just junk and I wasn't looking for a painting project. Lo and behold, I found this listing for only $125:

It was perfect! Well, except she didn't say what the size was. And I was nervous because the listing was over a month old. So I called the lady and she said, "Oh, I sold that to a consignment shop." That was last Sunday when I called. I was frantic to get back down to St. George the next day.

I eventually found the table in the back corner of the shop--it hadn't been put out on the selling floor yet. My heart sank when I saw how small it was. It has a leaf, but instead of making the table longer, it makes it wider and more square. I called Mark and got some measurements and our new chairs would have barely fit under it. It was basically the same size as our old table. Oh, and they had marked the price up to $295!!! If it had still been $125 I still probably would have bought it, because it was such a cute table. Ughhhhhh...

The rest of the store had all sorts of great stuff--it's called Urban Renewal in St. George on the corner of Main St. and St. George Boulevard. I normally don't like consignment stores because of people's old yucky things, but I was impressed.

 It looks like they repaint/reupholster all the old furniture they get to make it pretty fabulous. If I had a bigger house, I'd have totally brought home a hutch or two.

 Trying to keep Luke in check was a nightmare at that store, so then we went back over to Passport Furnishings, where we'd tried to go on Saturday, and checked things out over there.

This was a fun place--they had some cute stuff and good prices but still nothing I was looking for. They had a ton of catalogs I could order from, so I flipped through as many as I could (we were running out of time and had to drive back in time for Madelyn to get home from school).

 

Wouldn't you know, I found the perfect table--except it had been discontinued! Of course!!!!! (Pulling hair out by this point...)

I got back on the freeway to go back home, and only had a spare ten minutes to look any place else. Down East Home was on the way, and at the last second, I decided to pull off and take a look at that table one more time.

 I had been thinking about this table, because out of all the ones we'd seen it was the right proportions for our dining room, it had a rustic finish that I wouldn't be too worried about the kids ruining, and it was only $349. I sat down and visualized our family sitting around it. I knew that if I waited until Thursday when Mark could come down and look at it again, it might be sold, and this was the last one they had. I texted Mark and he said he'd really liked that table. (I don't think he was too excited about a girly white table to begin with.)

FINE, I'LL BUY IT.

 

I heaved a huge sigh of relief when I paid for it and we got in the car and headed back home (also I had some chocolate). I knew that I could continue the search, or we could just drive up to Ikea, but I was pretty much done with the whole rigamarole. I thought it was kind of ironic that I ended up buying the very first table we had seen when we went looking. Could have just stopped right there!

So last Thursday, Mark drove down and managed to fit it inside our car with the bench seats folded down, and brought it home.

That thing is HEAVY. Super solid. This is one thing my children might not be able to destroy, which is some comfort.

 

 And here it is in its new home. It's not white, but I think it still looks good with the chairs.

 It's edges are blunt and the surface is natural, which I love.

  

 It really fills up that space. It took some getting used to at first. It's actually nine inches longer than the Ikea table would have been (although that one comes with a leaf).

We had our first meal on it (Belgian waffles) and it was so nice to be able to all sit down together! Mark and I usually had to sit at angles to the table because there was not room to comfortably sit and eat side by side without knocking elbows. The kids love having space to spread out. I'm sure that it will be covered with my sewing stuff in the very near future.

We were able to sell our old chairs (only for $50 though) and we're keeping the old table legs to maybe build a new computer desk with. The top is so beat up--cracked tile, dirty grout, teeth marks from overzealous toddlers.... that we're getting rid of it.

So that's the story of our new table and chairs. I'm extremely happy to have them!