Dining Room Table Via Underpriced Furniture

Our weekend mission: find a functional, affordable and color appropriate dining room table for our smallish living room.

Friday night, I was eager to visit our first target store, Cost Plus World Market, only to be a little disappointed. Loved the store and the style of—wasn't head-over-heels for the dining room table I'd seen in the previous weekend's Sunday paper. The Chemia table was a little more "country" than our tastes and didn't seem terribly durable. The price was almost right (somewhere around $750) but the quality of the wood didn't feel quite right to us, and we also thought we could find a look that was more "us." 

A quick stop by American Signature Furniture yielded similar results. We headed home, empty-handed, not that we would have been able to fit a table and six chairs in the Saab. 

Saturday was mostly spent helping my younger brother move. But it was just our luck that he rented a Uhaul for the day, needing to return it mid-Sunday morning. After finishing moving him around 3 or 3:30 that afternoon, we decided to take advantage of said "free" Uhaul. 

Our destination: Underpriced Furniture*. We'd been there once before on a hunt for a book case. And a book case we found! We picked up an espresso-colored floor-to-ceiling (the same as Haverty's advertises except for without the name branded on the bottom and without the Haverty's pricetag). Our bookcase set us back a bragworthy $220. Knowing we passed by some sharp-looking dining room tables during our visit a year before, we thought the Norcross-based furniture vendor was worth a shot.

The night before, Dan and I discussed how fabric cushions can be annoying to clean—and a major pain to replace. He wasn't sold on seats without built-in cushions because they just didn't seem as comfortable. 

Underpriced had a few tables that fit our bill. We decided on an espresso/cherry-colored table with a leaf. Without its leaf, the table is your standard rectangular table. The leaf, however, goes in lengthwise, giving you a large, square-shaped table. The chairs have built-in black leather cushions, a perfectly happy medium for what Dan and I discussed. 

Since our choice table was out of stock, we went home with the floor model and all six of its available chairs. The table was on sale for $699, including four chairs (with each additional chair costing $74)—so about $847. Dan asked if we could get a little bit of a discount since we bought the floor model. The salesperson rather quickly conceded, giving us the the equivalent of one "free" chair in our final price (about $773 total). 

We enjoyed dinner with visiting family on the new table that night. I think we'll be back to grab two more chairs since the square-shaped configuration allows for 8 chairs comfortably.

LOVE our new table!

*Web site isn't all that great or accurate with what's available in the store, so I suggest you make the trek up to Interstate 85 North's Jimmy Carter exit to check out what they have in-store.