Dining Table Lust

Since we moved into our now-awesome house, one of our favorite areas is our used-to-be-the-kitchen-but-now-its-an-eating-area right in front of the new, glass back doors.  It's such a bright and cheery spot and its now home also to our family-photo-album wall, which I promise to do a post on at some point. (Not today).  However, we were using my bought-when-i-lived-in-a-tiny-apartment "dining" set which consisted of a cute but tiny table and 4 chairs (that i recently recovered using some awesome cloth Dwell Studio for Target napkins).  It would be a perfect set for the aforementioned tiny apartment or a breakfast nook, but it just wasn't functional as the only dining table in the house as four adults could barely get around it.  So the search began for a dining table and right out of the gate I fell in serious table-lust with this lovely piece from Restoration Hardware.

I know.  Isn't he handsome?  We even went to our local store so I could run my fingers over the beautiful carved table-legs and smooth top.  But at $1295 for the small version, we just couldn't justify bringing him home, no matter how beautiful it was.  (even last January when they ran a sale and the size we wanted went down to $1095, we just couldn't bring ourselves to plop down that kind of change for a table.)  So we decided to just be happy with our cute, kitchenette size set and that was that.

But when I had free time and was just surfing the internet, I always drifted back to the table.  And looked for less-pricey alternatives and just couldn't seem to find any.  Until last week when I got one of those email coupon thingys.....

I went to delete it.  It was $10 off a $30 purchase at World Market.  And I didn't need anything that cost over $30 at World Market.  Or so I thought.  So I went to delete it.  But as I scrolled down something caught my eye.  They were advertising 50% off on dining room furniture so of course I clicked over to see what kind of deals and styles they had.  And that's when I found her.

Not quite as awesome as the table that originally stole my heart.  But pretty dang close.  And 50% off the original price of $499.00 making her in the realm of affordability.  I called for husband to come and look.  He loved it.  I loved it.  We wanted it.  I clicked through to the item page,  but of course the website had sold out.  Dejected, I went once again to delete the coupon email, when I thought that maybe I should call our local store just in case......

Victory!  They had one left and were happy to hold it for me!   Not only was it in stock, but it was 60% off in-store making it an awesome $199....plus, they were happy to honor my $10 coupon that started it all bringing my grand-including-tax total to $208.  That's right folks.  Almost $1100 cheaper that the original table.  And super similar....in fact....in retrospect, the original table was a little too "grand" for our cozy house.  The one we actually bought is perfect for the space.  It comfortable seats 4-6 and has a leaf so we can get 8 adults at the table if we needed to (i smell a dinner party cooking) which will be fabulous when it finally comes to be my turn to host holiday gatherings.

We have yet to locate chairs so we're still using our mismatched ones from the other table, but if I've learned anything, its to be patient and the perfect item will come.  I'm sure there is a dining-table chair post in my future.  :)