At Home: The not-so-new-anymore buffet

Aaahhhh, the dining room buffet. Such a seemingly simple purchase. Little did I know it would turn into a nightmare. But don't worry, it has a fairy tale ending.

It started with a dining room table. A really fantastic dining room table that Zach and I found at Crate & Barrel for only $500. We knew we wanted something with clean lines made of solid wood (or as solid as our budget would allow). So when we found this beauty made of solid mango wood at Crate & Barrel we were super excited. The one pictured here is slightly different than ours. Mainly it's an extension table whereas ours is one solid piece (no extension leaves), but you get the idea.

We don't like a lot of ornate details, but we really appreciate solid wood construction and the Cabria fit both of those requirements. We ordered it. Received it. Unpacked it. Admired it. All was well. We ordered the matching chairs too.

Everything was solid wood and really well made. We couldn't have been happier.

A year or two passed and we eventually started talking about purchasing the matching buffet and hutch combo in the Cabria line. It was rather pricey at $1298, but we knew it was solid mango wood like the table and chairs and we thought it would be a good investment. We went to the store and checked it out. It seemed really nice, but being that it was such a major purchase we sort of stalled a bit.

I casually mentioned to my mom that we were considering purchasing the Cabria buffet and hutch and then didn't think much of it again until a short time later when she and my dad offered to pay for it as a gift (very generous!). So I waited for C&B to offer free shipping and placed the order. This is where the nightmare begins. The Cabria comes as two separate pieces: a buffet and a hutch top. We ordered both (to maximize our storage options), but when they were delivered, the hutch was damaged. So our buffet lived alone in our dining room while we waited for a new hutch top. Long story short, after three hutch tops were delivered and all three were damaged we gave up. We called C&B and had them pick up the buffet too.

Needless-to-say, I was a bit frustrated, but in the end, I was actually relieved, because, to be honest, I wasn't super jazzed about the look of the Cabria buffet and hutch. It was a little too country for my taste and although it had the same flared legs as our table and chairs, I really couldn't see any other similarities between them.

The search continued. I decided I might have more luck finding what I was looking for in a second-hand shop or on Craig's List. So I started looking online, but didn't find anything I loved that was in my price range or local area. And even if I did find something that met all that criteria, I didn't have a truck to get it home. Hmmm...this was getting more complicated by the minute.

One day, while visiting my parents in NH, my mom, my cousin, and I stopped at a consignment shop to check it out. It's a shop I had passed hundreds, probably thousands, of times growing up in NH but had never gone into. While we were perusing, I walked around some furniture and there staring back at me was the perfect mid-century modern buffet. After much (controlled) excitement, I emailed a photo to Zach to get his opinion. He thought it looked good. I loved it. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. And the piece de la resistance...it was only $100! It was actually on sale from a whopping $150! Could my day get any better? My biggest issue was how was I going to get it home to PA. Enter dear old dad. I called him and, in my best time-to-butter-up-Dad voice, asked him if he would be able to bring it down in his truck when he and Mom came to visit next month. Of course he said he would. And here she is happily living in my dining room:

And just so you get the full effect, here's some detail shots:

It was quite the journey, but in the end, we got exactly what we were looking for. Some day I'd like to refinish her and possibly add some fun fabric to the back wall of the glass cabinet, but for now, I'm just super happy and grateful to have found such a great piece.