Good Things Come to Those Who Wait Or Grumble

If you read my last blog then you know that I found and purchased the night stands that match my bedroom set.  Rick and I bought this bedroom set 20+ years ago when we first got married and although the set came with night stands Rick was determined to save a few dollars and forgo several pieces of furniture in the set.  He convinced Dillard's to sell us a few pieces from the set which knocked off a little bit off the price of the set but also deprived me from marble topped night stands.  I know what you're thinking ....deprived is such a strong word.  But as many husbands can testify to women can be emotional about their purchases.  So now I had to find a company to deliver them to me....all the way from Tampa, Florida!  The store sales lady recommended a shipping company....well to be precise she recommended a guy named "LG".  So I called the number she gave me and asked for LG.  LG turned out to be a very chatty, knowledgeable man who quickly told me he would call me with a quote shortly.  Fifteen minutes later LG calls me and tells me that it will cost more to ship the night stands than the actual cost of the furniture.  Well I told him I'd need to think about it.  So I went and told Rick who had already said what amount we would pay and LG's amount was over that number.  So I quickly asked friends if anyone of them were going to Tampa for any reason.  One was but for vacation and I thought it would be a bit rude to say, "Hey can you leave the beach long enough to run to a furniture store for me?  Oh and can you load up and carry home two pieces of furniture that each weigh 250 lbs?"  So I wrote LG back and begged him to lower his price.  It worked!  He came down off the price just enough that we could have the night stands delivered.

I tracked those night stands all the way from Tampa to Atlanta to Memphis to Little Rock and finally down my street in a semi-truck!  LG had the marble tops packed in crates with foam all around them and then boarded up with wood screws holding it all together.  Then the base of the stand was wrapped in plastic and loaded in a crate too with foam all around them...definitely packaged well!  Rick and I opened up the crate in the garage then slowly wheeled the crates containing the marble tops inside our house using our dolly.   It took me quite a while with an electric drill to get all the screws out of the crate just to get to the marble tops but I finally got everything open and all set up in our bedroom.

After setting up both night stands I noticed that the marble was stained on both but the night stand on my side was more so than the one on Rick's side.  Also one of the top drawers has a small area that needed some wood glue attention.  Nothing to panic over but when you've waited 20 years for something ...well you want it to be just perfect and life is never perfect.  So I spent several hours googling how to clean marble and managed to get most of the stains out with various household products.  Hydrogen peroxide and a bleach product that claims to be safe for marble seems to have worked the best.  I told Rick one of us should get the marble top that looked the best and one of us should get the drawer that had to have a bit of wood glue.  He quickly told me that his side was now too heavy to move and he would just have to keep the best drawer and the best top.  Uh no....I'm sure all the ladies know how this story ends.  Fair is fair!

My bedroom looks just beautiful!  There is something to be said for furniture sets.  I know many people that love to mix and match but I love matching sets and symmetry.  My bedroom set is now complete and I believe that 20+ years of waiting for the whole set has proven that I have patience and a pit bull mentality when it comes to things that I want.  Rick would probably say that I grumbled for 20+ years and he was emotionally exhausted of hearing about my terrible loss.  But I like to say that I was persistent in making sure my dream came true.  Yeah...I know I have a little Disney or Hallmark Romance channel in me.

The Frugal Groom

Over 20 years ago Rick and I got married and moved into the house that I had built as a single, young lady.  Shortly before we were married my future mother-in-law came to visit and stayed at my house. She told me one night that my house was beautiful and that when Rick and I married not to let him  move one stitch of his furniture into the house.  I laughed and agreed with her.  So all of Rick's furniture except for a baby grand piano went to Salvation Army.  After we were married we quickly realized that some of my furniture was fine for one person but not big enough for two people.  So we started looking at furniture.  I found a beautiful, Lexington bedroom set at Dillards.   The set came with a queen sized sleigh bed, dresser with a giant mirror that weighed a ton, an armoire, and two marble topped night stands.  It was a beautiful set in a pickled oak finish.  The total cost for the whole set was around $3600.   I believed it to be a fair price but Rick did not.  So we battled around whether we should or shouldn't buy the set.  So we passed on the set until one night while Rick was bowling with his team.  Rick was telling the guys how his wife wanted this bedroom set that cost $3600 and how he just couldn't imagine spending that kind of money for a bedroom set.  One of the older gentlemen then quietly asked Rick why he works if he isn't ever going to spend a dime.  That one statement changed Rick's mind about the bedroom set.  Well sort of.....a few days afterwards Rick said we were going to get the bedroom set but only a few pieces of the set.  Well I was excited but disappointed that we couldn't get the whole set.  We ended up getting just the bed and dresser with mirror.   But I really wanted the two marble topped night stands.

So through the years I would look for them at furniture stores and occasionally I would find them but the cheapest I have ever found them was $1500 a piece.  Which frankly just irked me that we could have gotten an entire bedroom set for practically the cost of two night stands now.   But as luck would have it the missing night stands became a call for me to ask for what I really wanted through the years.  When we remodeled our master bathroom and I really wanted frameless glass doors even though they were more costly I pushed for us to get them.  All the while reminding Rick of the night stands that I really wanted years ago but he had insisted were too expensive.

Fast forward to just this last week when on a whim I decided to once again search for the night stands and see if any shops in the US had them.  Finally ...I found two marble topped, Lexington night stands in Tampa, FL in a consignment store.  Both night stands were inexpensive but the only difficult part is getting them to Arkansas.  The Tampa store doesn't ship.  So I'm having to hire or find someone to ship them to me.  Today when I made the purchase over the phone with the owner of "The Missing Piece" consignment shop in Tampa I told her this whole story of how long I've waited for these night stands and how much less it would have cost Rick if he had only bought me the entire bedroom set in the beginning.  She said, "Well that just gives me chills!'  Which made me laugh.

The moral of the story is that sometimes in life it pays to just pay up front rather than pay later.   Paying later often costs a great deal more and more than just financially.