Thursday, November 18, 2010

Adios bachelor pad cheap laminate wood over particle board coffee table - hello $15 newish looking coffee table

So you could say we are a little bit lazy when it comes to re-doing stuff around the house. I seem to be lacking the redecorating and crafting gene - so what. We've been needing a new coffee table for quite a while. My husband's bachelor pad coffee table is now finally history after 20+ years of hard service. Neither of us drinks coffee but we do enjoy other adult beverages - and in the past decade or so we've been sorta neglecting the use of coasters. Over the past several months, its gotten really bad - with actual particle board showing. See pic below.

We even looked around in actual furniture stores for a replacement, but none really jumped out at me and the pre-owned ones I've seen always had some sort of problem. I mean, we could afford new, but why buy something and pay retail for something I didn't totally love? The wait has paid off this week when I found the deal I was looking for. A coffee table that looks brand new, has a drawer for storage (I love storage) and had an awesome price of just $15. And it matches the rest of the furniture.

The old, embarrassingly crappy coffee table:


The new and the old side by side, (the price sticker is still on the new)


I wish the whole thing had drawers but oh well, you can't win them all.


The old coffee table was so bad off that I just hauled it straight to the dump. I think our county has a very reasonably priced trash / recycling program. As residents we are allowed to throw away our household trash / recycle for free if we bring it to one of the recycling /trash centers (however I think we are charged about $80 a year but that just gets added to our annual property tax. ) So it's free to throw away furniture and household stuff - except you do get charged a fee if you throw away stuff that is supposed to be permanently attached to your house (like a door or a toilet, but even then the cost is very low.)

So since I was throwing away something big, I had to take the coffee table to the junk mountain, which I normally don't go to. You will be proud of me - I resisted the urge to pick up a few stray soda cans I saw on junk mountain and put them in the recycling bin.



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really nice table, Chris! Susan C.

Zakary said...

RIP old coffee table, that last photo makes me laugh.

Susan said...

Yeppers it is in Coffee Table Heaven!!

Anonymous said...

got a coffee table from the salvation army with beautiful tile inlays ..... so i don't need coasters. =)

do you ever watch the nate berkus show? he is on daily after dr oz.... he is an interior designer by trade and constantly talks about how he loves yard sales, flea markets ... and he actually shows his finds..... i am happy to see "thrifting" is going main stream..... lots of us have been in on the secret for years.

Chris the Yardsale Queen said...

Anonymous - yes of course I know about Nate. One of their producers called me back in August to appear on one of the first episodes but it was going to be taped during our CA / Vegas vacation so it didn't work out.