A Table...at Last!

We're heading out to Rhode Island tomorrow for a weekend-long family extravaganza. Because I knew this was coming, I planned for it, time-wise:

• I turned in my review to PW Editor B, due today, last Friday (in addition to my other PW review last week, for PW Editor A).
• I turned in my review of PW Editor A, due Monday, on Monday as planned, and started to read the book for the PW review due this upcoming Monday, also to PW Editor A, so that I would not need to worry about it this weekend, or face a last-minute review Monday morning before eleven.

Alas, my best laid plans were to write the review this afternoon, leaving me enough time for mani-pedi, trip to tailor to pick up hemmed trousers and slight damage repaired to a sweater/jacket I found on deep discount earlier in the week. It's 4:30 in the afternoon now, and I'm just home after a last-minute three-hour adventure. It'll be a late night tonight, but since I don't sleep the night before we fly anymore, I'll be up anyway.

As for that three-hour adventure, here's the story: World Market's online circular arrived in this morning's email, indicating a huge sale on dining room furniture. We've lived in our house for 22 or so years, and don't have a real dining room table and chairs. We always end up renting when we entertain, but the thought of possibly getting a terrific deal on something appealed to me so much that I went through the circular and sent my husband photos of four possible options that were approximately half off—at least—prices we'd seen in the design district.

Next I drove to the nearest World Market. Two of the four options looked better in the photos than in person, and of the other two, which were quite nice to look at and featured clean lines, only one had chairs I found both comfortable and appealing, and were made from a wood and in a finish I liked. Had we been working with the decorator we occasionally use, he might have steered us away from buying eight side chairs rather than buying six and finding two other arm chairs, but I made an executive decision: time to finally take the plunge.

To get the best price, I needed to buy the six-piece set (four chairs, extendable table, and bench), then add four more chairs—two as swap outs for the bench. We don't yet know where, or if, we'll even use the bench, but because of the sale, the store would not swap out the bench for two chairs so that we'd need to only buy two more to end up with eight.

Unfortunately, the sole table at the store was damaged, and after they spent a figurative eternity phoning around, they finally located the one table in all of Dallas county at a store about a half hour away. The other store, which had the table but no chairs or bench, put the table on hold for me, and I paid for all the seating while the managers arranged so that when I paid for the table at the other location, they'd refund the difference to give me the lowest price. We had to eat a second delivery charge, but I went on my merry way to the other store. Because of the high finance involved, it took three employees at each of the two stores to make the transaction work, and I've got my fingers crossed that on Monday the actual two deliveries will be correct...not to mention Amex requiring me to call in to unfreeze my card due to all the strange activity.

I'm quite happy with what I picked out, and happily anticipate a dining room furnished with a dining room table and chairs rather than the small conference table and Windsor chairs that moved with us from our first house back in the day. It would be wonderful to finally replace the china cabinet we inherited with our first house, but hopefully it won't take another 22 years to find one now that we have a style with which to work.

A Table...at Last!