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.