Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Oh happy day!

A couple of weeks ago Greg and I went down to Restoration Hardware to see the farmhouse table we've been eyeing in person. My secret hope was that I'd be like, "Meh. I liked it better online."


They didn't have any farmhouse tables in the store, so my plan backfired a bit. We ended up talking to one of the sales reps for a long time and looking at wood samples. Toward the end she asked us if we'd ever considered the Boulangerie table. It's about $1500 less than the farmhouse table and the extra leaf stores away in the center of the table. It still has that rustic farmhouse feel. Restoration charges you a lot of money to give you a mass-produced product that looks like you built it yourself.



Turns out I don't care. We liked it and we really liked how much cheaper it was. And you know what? IT CAME ALREADY ASSEMBLED. This is the first new piece of furniture I've bought in over 15 years that didn't come from Ikea. Everything else I own was bought off of craigslist, thrift shops, or vintage stores. Even the couch from my reveal was from craigslist.

It arrived the morning of our earthquake party, right on time. Whoever RH contracts with to do their delivery is great. When we expand the table it stretches to 120 inches, very comfortably fitting 12 people.


I freaking love it.


Of course our chairs were all falling apart. I found a woman on craigslist selling an Indonesian table and seven teak chairs (that didn't match the table) for $250. I asked her if she'd be willing to split the table from the chairs, since they weren't a set. She graciously agreed to sell me the chairs for $25 apiece. And guys, we fit all seven of them in my two-door Honda Civic. It took thirty minutes of the craziest live Tetris game ever, but we did it.


These chairs are not our forever chairs. They need to be recovered (I almost attempted to do that prior to the party before I remembered candle light hides all sins) and one of them is totally busted, which I didn't realize until I got it home and into the light. The two yellow end chairs are on loan from my friend Ryan, who took pity on my chair situation when I moved into my house. Someday I really want wishbone chairs. They have a much lower profile so you'd see more of the table and less of the chair backs, like you do now. And that's a sexy chair.


But man, you can't beat the price of the ones we have right now. It's very difficult to find more than four matching chairs on craigslist, let alone 6 or 8. I think we'll be able to recoup our money should we ever get different chairs and need to sell these.

Now we need to do some creative rearranging of the other furniture in the room. We don't know what to do about Greg's armchair.


It's too big to fit in the basement or bedrooms and we have no place for it in the living room. It's sort of out of place in the dining room but we don't want to get rid of it. It's very comfortable even if it's not my style. And I have been such a decor autocrat that I want to incorporate as much of Greg's stuff as possible.

Last up, we need to get some place mats so we don't ruin our new table with food stains.  I like looking at our table so I don't want to cover it with a tablecloth but I grew up in a house that didn't use place mats. As a result, they seem really fussy to me. I guess I'll just need to get over that.


Blah blah, TL;DR. New pretty table!

12 comments:

  1. Not able to do a clear wax finish on the table to help prevent staining?

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  2. That table is downright fucking awesome.

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  3. That table is gorgeous...and what is this world of pre-assembled furniture you're talking about...you're kind of blowing my mind ;-)

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  4. What? No video of you fitting all those chairs in the car? It could have gone viral for sure. Chilliwith placemats at OCAC are pretty cool.

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  5. I wanted to take a picture at least but it was dark an pouring down rain. Thanks for the tip--I'll check those placemats out!

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  6. So NICE! And you'll love the butterfly leaf when you don't need to seat 12. I have one and it beats the heck out of storing it in the closet.

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  7. Grandma was talking about her table again yesterday and hoping a grandchild could use it, guess it won't be you :-)! Looks great!

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  8. I totally would have taken it if it was bigger! Ami and Graham are hoping to buy a house soon and I bet they'd love it.

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  9. Hi, I realize this post is from quite awhile ago and I'm not sure if you still check the comments or not, but I'm thinking of buying this table and the fact that its untreated is making me nervous. After owning this table for awhile are you still happy with it? Have you had any trouble with spills or large dents? Thanks.

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  10. We still love this table! We've spilled a number of things on it (curry, wine, water, we're slobs) and it's been great. We wipe it up right away and whatever pigment is in the thing we've spilled get drawn into the wood and pretty much disappears.

    Because it's fairly distressed already you can't tell where we've dented it sawing down things or working on home improvement. And everyone compliments it when they come over. :)

    If you have any other questions just let me know!

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  11. just found your post. I'm thinking about getting this exact table. Do you have trouble with food getting stuck in between the planks where the seams are?

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