New End Tables!

I'm not busy enough at work, which I'm sure many people dream of, but really, it gets old and I'm starting to get scared that I may develop early onset Alzheimer's from my lack of stimulation or thoughts that require my hemispheres to work together.  As another side effect, I've become one of those people you see in the Bing commercials who just start rattling off random, unrelated words and facts from my long hours/days of perusing the internet.

One of my favorite pastimes is scouring the furniture listings on Craigslist in the hopes of finding something I didn't know I needed.  Most often, people are selling their nasty old junk at insane prices, but every once in a while, you can score a sweet deal.  In the past, we've picked up our awesome pie safe and a vintage record cabinet that we use as a side table in our office.  Last Tuesday, I stumbled upon a listing for some vintage looking end tables that I thought would fit perfectly with our sectional in the basement since our Lack side tables recently met their demise (we took them outside for Dexter's birthday party, forgot to bring them back in, humidity + laminated furniture = disaster).

What our end tables looked like before all the black laminate peeled off...

Luckily, I was able to convince John we needed them, so the next day we went venturing off to pick up our tables.  Unfortunately for us, there was a huge storm in the middle of the day Wednesday, which ended by 3:30 or 4:00, but the damage was already done.  Traffic was a nightmare on the larger side streets, so we decided to try the smaller side streets, which were just as busy.  We finally escaped the traffic and our spirits were lifting... until we realized my Google Maps was on "walking" directions (from our trip to NYC) and not "driving", which lead us to a park where "trail" literally meant trail and not a street named trail... ugh.

At this point (all the traffic had set us back almost an hour), I was ready to just go driving through the park, but since John was driving and is decidedly more sane than me, we turned around, got our directions on "driving", and finally made our way to our destination.  The side tables' current owners were an army family, and as a result, the tables had lived in exciting places like Jordan, Bahrain, and North Carolina!  They picked up the tables years ago at an antique shop and had travelled the world with them since.  I love having a back story like that instead of the usual, "Well, it was a lazy Sunday when we travelled to IKEA, brought home the box, battled the construction for hours, and now here we are with the same table as a million other people".

So, here are our new end tables!

John's providing us with a sense of scale. 

The top is a tooled leather.

Close-up of the detail. 

In its new home.

Close-up of the feet.

I'm really happy with them.  They're much larger than I was expecting, but that's great because we really needed something with bulk to compete with our massive sectional and not feel all wimpy next to it.  For some reason, the pulls on the front of the tables didn't really click with me until we saw them in person and I realized pulls mean drawers... which is perfect to finally provide a home for our remotes and John's Xbox controllers.  I'm in love with the little wheel feet, too.  I think overall, they just have great character.  I originally thought I'd be adding them to my list of things to paint, but right now we're pretty happy with them, so I think I'll let that idea simmer for a while.  At the very least, I might give the hardware a shot of spray paint to perk them up a little.

Another happy adventure in Craigslisting.  If you just forget about our misadventures in actually getting there (and I won't even get into the return trip drama, but I'll just note that we had to stop at 7-11 for a couple of six-packs on the way home)...