Our Fine Furniture Finds (part 1)

When I was considering starting a blog I was concerned that I would have nothing to say and that it would sit un-updated week after week… what was I thinking? If you know me in real life you know that I am never quiet for long. But I’ve decided that instead of doing one gigantic post about this past weekend I’m going to draw it out into many parts. You see, we got 5 large pieces of furniture for the house … so it was kind of a big weekend.

My birthday was Friday and my big gift this year was a Canon G12. No, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m hoping to learn enough to take some decent pictures. Since we’re buying a house and hopefully adopting a child soon, I figured there are going to be things I want photos of. When we went furniture shopping this weekend it was with camera in hand. I’m not so sure they really liked me walking around taking pictures of things I liked, but no one tried to stop me. (Sometimes I think if you just do stuff with confidence people don’t know what to do so they let you!)

I shopped around at a couple of furniture stores last week and I found a table I liked ($600) but I hated the chairs (sold separately). I love the clean lines and how solid of a table it is.

Here it is (picture taken with my phone):

I spent the rest of the weekend looking for either chairs I liked that would match the table, or a complete set for a good price that I like. We stopped by Roomstore on Friday because they are going out of business so we thought everything would be crazy cheap. Prices were good, but not quite as low as I expected. That said, we found a table we liked that came with 6 chairs and cost a total of $1200. At the time this was the best price we’d found. One of our requirements for a table is that it can fit three chairs on a side so a total of 8 people can sit at it. This is because LJ has a large family (that we would like to be able to host) and because we love to invite a bunch of friends over to play games. So, we will need tables that seat 8 in both the kitchen and dining room.

Anyways, back to shopping, we were this close to buying the $1200 set but we decided to hold off because it wasn’t the last in stock so we had some time to shop around. Boy am I glad we did. We ended up at Bel Furniture on Saturday and hit the jackpot. We ended up with 5 major pieces for our home for $2000.99. Not too shabby if you ask me!

This is the table we bought:

It comes with 6 seats, but we tried it and it can squeeze an extra two in if required. Unfortunately they don’t sell any extra chairs for this set, but the seats are so similar to our old set I think if we just use two old chairs when large groups come over it won’t be too noticeable.

Here is our old table. Not the exact same color but similar chairs (this is our table in our old basement apartment in DC):

Anyways, the table we got isn’t exactly what I pictured in my head, but it was less than $500 for the whole set. When LJ pointed out the price and asked if the table would meet my requirements I thought “fits eight: check, clean lines: check, all wood: check” and then I also realized it was so cheap we could afford more furniture for the house than expected, so I decided it was great!

I’m not sure if I’m going to make seat covers for it. On one hand, I feel like they look very old lady. On the other hand, my butt hurts if I sit too long in a wood chair. I’m considering sewing some covers (using a very non-old lady print) and maybe just using them only for occasions I know I’ll be sitting around for a long time.  I don’t really want chair covers sitting out normally. I guess we’ll see after I’ve lived with the table for a little while and my bottom has weighed in on the situation. ;)

I’ll tell you more about our other purchases tomorrow…

- Kris