The search is over (for now at least)

One of the most exciting things, for me, about moving is the chance to decorate our new house!  I LOVE to decorate.  I'm not the best, many "visions" that I've had haven't *quite* turned out how I pictured, but on the whole I'd say I'm pretty good...and did I mention that I love it? 

There are many challenges in our new house.  The first is that it is MUCH bigger than any other house we've lived in.  There are a lot of empty rooms.  We definitely don't have enough furniture for this house.  The second challenge is that we are renting--we don't want to put a lot of money into this house, or into furnishings, since we'll only be here, at most, 3 years.  The guys that we are renting this house from have agreed to let us do pretty much whatever we want to it--we can paint, hang pictures, and they've even said we can do things like change out light fixtures and stuff like that.  So short of doing some major demo we've got the green light.  But...again, we don't want to spend a lot of money on a house we don't own.  And our third challenge is budget.  At the moment we're renting this house and we still have the mortgage on our house in NY.  It will be a few months until we close on that.  Plus, Christmas is coming.  Lots of expenses. 

David and I talked it over and it's very important to both of us that even though we're renting and only going to be here for a few years, we need to make this place HOME.  So we decided that we are going to have to buy some things for this house.  We're going to try and do it as afforably as we can, and we're going to try and buy pieces that we really like and can transition to another home in the future. 

When David and I first moved to FL we bought a kitchen table.  Correction--DAVID bought the kitchen table.  He was so proud when he brought it home to our apartment.  It looked great.  But...there were no chairs.  When I asked him where the chairs were his answer was that the table was cheaper without the chairs.  Um...no kidding!  But where are we going to sit?  So basically we used two beat up leftover chairs that his parents gave us--they were nicked and cracked and paint spattered--and when we had company we brought out some very unsteady folding chairs.  It was not good.  When we moved to NY we didn't have an eat-in kitchen so it wasn't a big deal--our chairless table went into the basement.  Now that we're in OH and have an eat-in kitchen again, I decided that I was going to find us a kitchen table that had chairs!  Then I could use the other table in my scrapbooking room.  Problem(s) solved. 

So I've been on the hunt.  I knew that I wanted a round table, possibly one that would expand into an oval with a leaf if we needed it to be bigger.  I was thinking that I wanted it to be white, with white chairs, but I was open to other colors/stains.  Definitely casual, something that can hold up to a very busy 6 year old who likes to make his own breakfast!  So we've been going to every furniture store we can find and it appeared that our table just didn't exist.  Everything was either too big, too formal, the wrong color...nothing worked.  We kept passing this other furniture store, but it was always closed.  Finally, one day after I picked up Anderson from school I drove by and it was open.  So we went in.  And there it was--as soon as we walked in I saw THE table that I'd been thinking about.  I was so excited!  And...then I saw the price.  It was $1349 for the table and 4 chairs.  That was A LOT more than we'd been planning on spending on a table, especially since we have many other things to buy as well--coffee tables, end tables, bookshelves, TVs...LOTS more to get.  I was a little bummed, but I knew there had to be something out there that would work. 

Yesterday we decided to go to Ikea.  We needed to get some bookshelves, a storage unit for Anderson's toy room, a chair for the office, and a nightstand for Anderson's room among other things.  I looked on their website and they did have a round white dining table with a leaf.  And they had chairs that I liked too.  I was hopeful that we'd like it when we saw it because it was much more affordable--$249 for the table and $59 each for the chairs.  I'm sure the quality isn't as good as the more expensive table, but honestly...I'm ok with that.  I'm all for spending the money for couches, beds, dressers...that sort of item.  But a kitchen table and chairs--they're going to be used everyday.  They'll get beat up...I'd rather spend a little less so I don't feel AS bad when it gets nicked, bumped, scraped, colored on with crayons, or worse!  Ikea is a great place for things like this because even though their furniture is sold in flat packs that you have to assemble at home and is sometimes particle board rather than solid wood, they are affordable, durable, and they *look* like you spent more money on them! 

So we ended up getting a tall and short bookshelf for our office, and chair and ottoman for our office, a storage shelf for Anderson's toy room, a chair for Anderson, a nightstand for Anderson's bedroom, AND we bought the table and  6 chairs for our kitchen.  Plus a bunch of odds and ends that we always end up finding when we go to Ikea.  We spent a grand total of $1186.94.  So we got all of THAT for less than the cost of the more expensive table and chairs that I originally found. 

I was very excited when we got home with our 14 boxes of new furniture until I realized that we had to assemble it all!  So before we went to bed last night David and I put together the table and 2 of the chairs to see if we REALLY liked it.  No worries--we love it!  It just may be a while until we have the other 4 chairs put together!!!