no, not another dog/cat. although we've been tempted, i think 2 of each is plenty.

last night we went to look at this buffet, as mentioned here. thanks for all of the responses/suggestions to my post the other day!

funny story... when looking at furniture on craigslist i had found another piece that i thought we could potentially use in the dining room. but i thought i liked the one above slightly better so i did not contact the other seller. when we went to this sellers house to look at the buffet, he actually owned the other piece of furniture that i had been looking at too! i thought it was so strange that out of the hundreds of pieces of furniture on craigslist, this guy owned the 2 i had been looking at, esp. since they were pretty different. it was nice to be able to compare them side by side.

we did not end up buying the first buffet. it actually had a shiney faux wood laminate top - that did not match the rest of it. the legs were brass and in bad shape. the size was good, but the top really is what made the decision for me.

so we started to look at the other buffet. it was in worse shape, but unlike the buffet above, this one was made of solid wood. it needed to be refinished or painted or something. but the shape was different, and unique, and i think that's why i liked it. i think i can make it work. so we brought it home. we even talked to the guy down from the asking price ($50) because we had only brought $40 in cash because that was how much the other buffet was.

different, right? what do you think? can we make it work in our house?

i'm thinking we'll paint it, and replace the knobs.

the top esp. needs some help. none of the scratches are all that deep though so we'll be able to sand them out. the seller said that her mother had used this as a craft table.

it has a lot of storage and i like that it does not match our tv stand. we might remove that center piece on the bottom because our air vent is actually under this right now. i'll have to see how it looks.

so now the question is, should we paint it? if so, what color? replace the knobs? eventually we will probably tile the fireplace with some kind of light/white tile so i do not really want to go with white. the floors (when we finally replace them) will be a similar tone to what they are now. my first thought was to paint it a medium gray, but we already have a lot of gray in the room with the chairs and the curtains. should i try to pick up a color from the painting? go with something completely different?

for those of you who have painted furniture, any recommendations? i think that it would be difficult to refinish with stain, with all of details, but i'm also open to that idea. i guess we could try to find a matching stain color and only refinish the top, the rest is in ok shape.