When I first saw this pretty set of furniture, it immediately reminded me of this set of occasion tables that I had recently spotted in the Crate and Barrel catalog:
The crate and barrel coffee table alone was $499 while we snagged our whole set of one cocktail table and two end tables for under $400. Same sleek design and quality hardwood material, but we got a set of three tables for only a fraction of the price! I also much perfer the muted metal of our table set rather than Crate and Barrel's shiney stainless steel because it gives the furniture a more earthy and grounded look (as opposed to the office-furniture vibe of shiney metal).
Our other truly unexpected find was a beautiful floor model sofa table that was marked almost 50% off. The table first caught my eye because it had the same style as our cocktail table set with a metal frame and ardwood surface but upon closer inspection the wood had a smoother finish and lighter stain. Nevertheless, it had the same rustic but simplistic feel and the gorgeous natural wood surface that I really loved. Also, it had really unique details like 3 bolts along the outer edge that gave the table a lot of character. When I was doing some more furniture research later that day, I saw this coffe table version of the sofa table we had just purchased:
From the weathered metal frame down to the three bolt detail on the side, the look of this table was a dead-on match to our new sofa table. This close cousin of our sofa table was from Restoration Hardware priced at over $1000. We got our sofa table for under $200. While our sofa table definitely isn't an european antique crafted from a reclaimed brickmaker's table, it also has interesting origins that we have traced back to a boutique woodwork shop in India that specializes in hand crafted wood furniture-- a very cool find I was not at all expecting the find at Living Spaces (which I have always deemed as being a retailer of cookie-cutter style furniture). I was really pleasantly surprised!