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!

Me and curtain panel sewing are breaking up.

Our dining room has always been a design nightmare with half wood floors and half ugly carpeting and a mishmash of furniture. It's such a fucking nightmare that of the 40,000 pictures I have taken of the house, there are about four of the dining room.

Shortly after I moved in.

Dirty, broken, plastic blinds

Now it's a fucking nightmare WITH DRAPES! And Ikea Enje shades.

The Enje blinds let in a ton more light during the day, while allowing us to keep our privacy. Ask me about the time I wandered out to the kitchen in my underwear and spotted Greg's step-dad outside my kitchen window, hefting a rocking chair over his head. It's not as weird as it sounds but it was super embarrassing.

I've been searching craigslist for three years, trying to find a large scale table (preferably something in the farmhouse family) to fill this room. This one woman has been listing her Restoration Hardware table, which currently sells for $2395, for $1900.

She's had the listing up for two months. That makes me crazy. Why would I buy your used table that I can't return to RH if it ever develops a defect or doesn't look right in the space? Why not save an extra $500 toward a brand new one that comes with delivery to my house? I don't believe that you should ever ask more than half the cost of a brand new item that is available online, especially from a mass producer like Restoration Hardware. The table isn't special or unique or an antique. I tried to negotiate her down but she wouldn't go for it. So I guess she'll just keep listing her table that no one will buy and we'll keep watching for sales.

This kills me because I hate consumer culture and I always prefer to buy used, preferably older stuff that wasn't produced in a factory in China where the employees are treated terribly. Someone recently remarked that we are horrified when we hear about slavery in the south. How could people do that? We would never do that! But we buy cheap consumer goods knowing full-well that the factory workers are operating under inhumane conditions. Future generations will frown on us.

But that lady on craigslist really makes me dig in my heels. I don't want to buy from her and I don't want to buy new because it will get assembled by underpaid workers, shipped from somewhere very far away, and jammed full of chemicals that will off-gas in my house. And whoa Heather, why don't you talk about feline AIDS as long you're bumming everyone out?

But yeah, curtains! I finished the curtains. They took days to make and I never want to make another panel again.

I think they make the room look closer to finished and I'm pleased that I can finally cross them off the list. Now we just have to find a table and chairs that don't fall apart when you sit on them. Chairs are so pricey, you guys! When did it get so expensive to sit?

Sorry about that shame spiral detour in the middle there. Sometimes I feel embarrassed by the abundance of riches in my life. Then I have a glass of wine and I make fun of The Bachelor and everything is okay again.