A Tale of Two Coffee Tables {Part I}

So, we have a new coffee table! It's very exciting, I assure you, and like nearly every other piece of furniture I own, it has a story about how it came to live in our home.  But, before I get to sharing my new pride and joy, I feel I must tell y'all the story behind our old coffee table.  (As it turns out, she's the reason we have a new one actually.)

Two years ago, when we lived in Illinois, my living room was quite spacious, and I determined that we needed a fairly large coffee table to suit the space.  As any Craigslist-obsessed person does, I diligently checked the St. Louis listings until one day I saw an ad for two marble coffee tables--one rectangular shaped table for $150 and its square-shaped mate for $100 or so.

Obviously, the price was more than fair, but it was going to be about a 45 minute drive, so I needed to do a little planning to figure out when to pick it up.  Oh, and the seller said to bring help, as it was really  heavy.  Now, when I am in this kind of situation where I really want something that is listed, but I am dependent on the seller emailing me back and wanting to pick me as their buyer (because in my head like 20 other people are also emailing them about the awesome $100 marble coffee table!), I can be a little crazy.  I try to walk that fine line between "very interested, yet level-headed buyer" and "strange obsessed person."  Sometimes I probably do a better job at walking the line than other times.

Well on this cold December night, I did what any reasonable wife would do.  I hired a babysitter to watch my kids and begged my husband to drive with me after work to pick up the heavy coffee table!  God bless that man who had to get up at 5 am the next day (I'm telling you, I remember details when it comes to my CL acquisitions.) and agreed to come on this journey with me.

He's a keeper!!

Just testing it out!  Ah, my babies!  They have grown so much since these pictures!

Once we arrived at the home of the coffee table, we realized how heavy this sucker actually was.  Literally, it was 300-400 lbs.  I kid you not.  Thankfully the seller had a dolly, but between Philip, myself and the woman selling the table, we nearly had to give up on the whole thing it was so unbelievably heavy.  Thankfully I did not have to call the whole thing a bust and somehow we managed to get it in the back of our car.  Just to give you an idea of how involved, exhausting and flat out ridiculous the whole experience of trying to move the table was--the lady ended up giving it to us for free!  I believe she said something along the lines of "If you want this table this badly, I just want you to have it for free!" I may have hugged her.

Are you seeing the kind of muscle that was required to move this thing?! Many thanks to these dear friends for their assistance :)

Let me try to wrap this up.

The coffee table was everything I could have hoped it would be and more.  I loved it in our living room.  Fast forward to a year later and my table was not so kind to my girls.

The little lady on the right lost a tooth very prematurely thanks to an unfortunate collision with the table.  The little lady on the left got a small chip in her tooth when she grazed its edge on her way down to the floor.

At this point I decided I should go ahead and hang my Mother-of-the-Year badge up and find us a different coffee table--maybe one not made of a hard stone?!  Not to worry, my marble love lives in its own little crated bed in our garage (I'm totally serious) and will hopefully be able to join our family again in a couple years.

Proof that it does have its own bed. (Again, please note the grimacing occurring.  These movers loved it when I mentioned that I got this for free.  ha.)   Surely y'all must have pictures documenting the life of your furniture too?

Check back soon for the next installment in this riveting series :)