Frugal Furniture

Here’s our dining room table and chairs!!!

Yes, part of planning on saving money is making sure you don’t indulge in unnecessary purchases. Being an HGTV nut, I’m always plotting different furniture arrangements and storage solutions for our apartment. However, I’ve been a very good girl about holding off on a big purchase: a dining room table and chairs. We hadn’t had one for the six months we’ve been here. This was fine, it being just the two of us, we were perfectly happy to sit on the floor and eat at our coffee table in front of the TV.

I knew there was the possibility of a table in our future, but we kind of had to wait for someone to die.

Morbid- yes, I know.

However, one of my friend’s parents was caring for a dog of their infirmed neighbor. It was pretty apparent that the neighbor wasn’t going to pull through, and her children were going to sell the house. Since my friend’s parents had helped out so much, they asked them to take whatever furniture they wanted. Since they already have a house full of furniture, they took the dining room set for us!!!

I don’t mind one bit, that this is a hand-me-down and here’s why:
3. It’s actually rather cool.
I drool every time I pass West Elm’s window, and this table has those clean retro lines that I adore.

2. It’s easy to update.
I only remove four screws and staple on some extraordinary new fabric and these chairs will go from frumpy to fabulous.

3. They are quality, well made pieces.
It has three leaves and a protection pad so we could seat four or 10 around the table comfortably for years to come. It also came with six chairs, so I can have a nice group of friends over and have everything match! Of course, being real wood, they were quite the haul from our basement parking garage to our fourth floor pad. However, these pieces will last probably beyond our needs- you can’t say that about those plywood Ikea pieces!