As I have established on previous occasions, what drives home improvements for me is a kind of triage system. Something about the house will bug me but it’s only once I reach a sort of aesthetic must we live like this, like ANIMALS? thought loop that I bother looking into remedies. This must not happen much, as thus far it has led to exactly one furniture purchase (the credenza) and nothing in the way of curtains, rugs, etc. OK there was the small matter of the kitchen renovation that involved putting in a powder room, but this was more functional. (A house with two toilets is better than with just the one, certainly now that four of us are fighting over them.)
While a whole bunch of how-do-we-live-like-this thoughts occurred to me simultaneously (the white paint and curtains unchanged from move-in in most rooms, etc.), the one I’ve fixated on is the one that could theoretically be addressed without spending a million dollars or calling in contractors, and it’s this: we don’t have a coffee table.
We used to! It was a cool-looking one that had been my parents’, some kind of black Formica thing that was like this solid block with curved edges. But in various moves, one to a furnished apartment, anything at all interesting (I think that was the only interesting thing, it was otherwise various free-from-a-neighbor couches) got left behind.
Then we had a shiny red IKEA “Lack” that was so good but, same, and they don’t make those anymore. So what we now have is also red, also IKEA, but the kids’ plastic table. It is that but—here’s its real charm—sanded down, kind of, where I once tried to get marker or something off of it with the wrong sponge. A badly DIY-refinished non-refinishable plastic table. Microplastics from a whole new source. That said, on a purely design level, I kind of like it, and want it to stay in the house. Just not as the coffee table.
As always happens when looking for something like this (or even something not like this; I’ve had the same when looking at, say, rental apartments, and I don’t doubt people who use dating apps experience this with other human beings), it at first seems like there’s a ton of great stuff out there. This sea of coffee tables, many quite nice, nearby, and $60 tops. Well that’s sorted!
Not so fast. I contacted two alleged coffee table sellers from Facebook Marketplace. One didn’t reply, but I received some kind of automatic notification that the price had gone from $50 to $75. Had he posted $75 initially I’d have just bought this coffee table (assuming its unlisted measurements and material made sense once I learned them, which I did not), but who’s to say if it stops there? Is it a bidding war? Is there even a coffee table available?
The other Facebook find, a higher end for that forum ($150?) but local enough for no delivery logistics quandary, also never replied, but in their quasi-defence, I later noticed this ad had gone up many months if not years ago, so presumably the coffee table was long since sold or thrown out.
Both of these were the right idea, though, style-wise. From them I formed a sense of what it is that would work in the space, and in any possible rearranged versions thereof. Figuring this out of course made it so that no such coffee tables are findable.
The things I know how to buy, that’s how I shop. This is how I have come to own dozens of t-shirts, 20-something bottles of nail polish (I counted, once, thinking I might buy a thing to store them in, which I did not do) and exactly no coffee tables. If a condiment exists, I own it. But I don’t know how you buy chairs so we don’t really have enough of those and have to move them around a bunch of times whenever we have people over.
I expanded the search, including Craigslist and Kijiji (Canadian Craigslist). Used would be my preference, not eco-sainthood (don’t call me Greta) but for solid wood, for don’t make ‘em like they used to reasons. Also because where new is concerned, there are three possibilities: 1) IKEA 2) IKEA particleboard/veneer but high-concept and more expensive or 3) this nondescript table that looks like IKEA is made out of nice materials and is therefore $30,000.
But Toronto doesn’t have used furniture stores, or if it does, they’re hidden on Google Maps and also when you walk down the street. There is something called Habitat ReStore, which has some well-priced, normal-looking furniture, but—per the website—mainly things like sink parts. Merits a trip to their website but not a 50 minute bus ride or whatever this would be.
Patterns start to emerge. An item listed as “free” online is actually a “DM for price,” which is annoying because everyone could be saved the trouble if they were just like, it’s a $400 coffee table, and who knows, maybe it’s worth that! (Probably not, from the photos.) Anything too good to be true has some disclaimer about how it’s actually a few bits of wood that someone who knows how to make coffee tables could assemble back into one, or it’s located somewhere mysterious in Ontario far from Toronto that if I had it together to drive there I’d just go somewhere with normal antiques stores.
I have followed consignment antiques boutiques I don’t even know, a bunch of things, on Instagram. I have reunited, virtually, with the shops open only by appointment, or only on Saturday afternoons aka playground o’clock.
I have gone into stores that do not sell coffee tables but seem like they might. I went to one that had exactly one coffee table, and it had pros and cons but I could immediately tell wasn’t the thing, but the proprietor offered such an earnest, impassioned pitch for it, and for its superiority to all those other coffee tables (none of which he sold) that I felt like I had to hear him out, despite knowing I wasn’t purchasing the time share.
I think constantly of how I could solve this dilemma in 30 minutes on East 23rd Street in Manhattan, at the furniture-having thrift stores (Housing Works and City Opera especially), assuming those are still there. And now, too, of how, in my husband’s hometown in Belgium, there’s a thrift store selling gorgeous Belgian furniture such that you could furnish an entire house, as in all the furniture one could possibly need, for maybe 500 euros total. (We had many discussions of what would be possible with a shipping container.)
Toronto, however, is a coffee-table desert. The red plastic one is growing on me and could well be the best Canada’s largest city has on this front.
“The things I know how to buy, that’s how I shop” can relate
Restore can be good, but it's hit and miss. Sometimes I go and there's nothing but junk. Other times, a good find. My last purchase was a dining room sideboard (I normally shop in person, but in this case bought based only on a website picture). Just $65, but shipping was $150. Fair enough except that their shipper would not bring it in the house, and just left it in the driveway, which irritates me enough that I might not rush back there.