A Story of a Table

At the end of my sophomore year of college, I bought a kitchen table from Wal-Mart for $100. Mel and I found it and thought it’d be perfect for our skanky little duplex we were going to live in the next year. I decided I’d splurge and purchase it; after all, $100 was A LOT for an unemployed college girl to spend at one time. But I was proud of it, and it felt like my first big furniture purchase.

The table was cute. It served its purpose in the duplex and moved with Mel, Natalie, and me to the triplex. We spent lots of time talking, eating, and laughing around the table. Most of the time it was covered in homework and books.

Then the table moved with Matt and me to our first apartment in Fayetteville. We just got married, so the table was always set with placemats and flowers and dinner at 5:30. Before long, we decided to move across the country. When the movers came, the table went with them. And it actually showed up in our Portland apartment in one piece. In that apartment, it started looking kind of frumpy. I was getting tired of it, but we didn’t have any room for a nicer, bigger table.

When we moved to our house a year ago, the table came, once again. Matt and I really began to loathe it. It became super wobbly – anything that had to be cut with a steak knife was out of the question for dinner. We couldn’t have many people over for dinner because we only had room for four. And it didn’t look right; we had this great living room with this awful, cheap ass table off to the side. The table hit rock bottom when our friends carried it into our kitchen for Flip Cup, a relay race beer chugging game that made our kitchen sticky for weeks. The fact that our table was perfect for Flip Cup was the final straw. We decided it was time to find a new table, and in January we bought a lovely modern dining room table from West Elm. This table was sturdy and big and pretty and Could Not Be Used For Beer Games.

The new table didn’t come with chairs, though. We wanted some sleek leather chairs to match, and we found some at a local Ross. But we only found two. So our quest for chairs began, and during that time we used the chairs from the old table to occupy our new table, ghetto fabulous style. We hit up every Ross in the Portland metro area weekly for months. We found one. Then we found another. And then we got stuck. With only 4 chairs.

And I don’t know if people know this about Ross, but they’re bitches when it comes to returning things. So we were truly stuck with four chairs.

But finally, finally, we found some lovely leather chairs that ended our search! And the table is just perfect. And this meant we could now sell our old Wal-Mart table on Craigslist. We posted the ad on Sunday evening, and by morning we had 10 offers.

And folks, I am unbelievably proud to say we sold the Wal-Mart table to two college girls.

They came to check it out and discussed re-upholstering the chairs. When those girls asked me where I bought the table, I told them Target. Because hello! They ban Wal-Marts out here! And I wanted the table gone!

The girls took it. And I hope they brag about their great Target find on Craigslist to all their college girlfriends.

The best part? We sold it for $80. BOOYAH!