wishful wednesdays {dining room}

It's been quite some time since I wrote a "wishful wednesday" post.  They were by far my most popular posts, and also the most time consuming.  I took a break from them because I had less time and less inspiration, but now that The Morning Man and I have moved into a bigger better apartment I've got inspiration comin' out the wazoo!

Now that we have the time and space to really make our house a home The Man and I just can't stop thinking, and wishing, and planning, and (for the first time) doing.  So wishful wednesdays are getting a little re-vamp.  At times they will still be about my fantasy future, but now they will also be about our real life plans for our real life home.  Of course we're renting so there won't be any big over-haul projects, but we plan on focusing on making each room great and perfectly us (and adaptable for when we inevitably move again).

First things up - The Dining Room!

I haven't talked about it too much so far, but The Morning Man is an incredible craftsman.  He designs and fabricates beautiful and unique furniture, and I am the lucky girl who gets to take it all home.  Back in the beginning of July he started working on our dining room table (yeah, we have a dining room!).  He had this crazy idea and with his woodworking skills and my powers of sudoku he created a one-of-a-kind and totally awesome dining table:

Here's a picture of it in the shop before the clear coat and glass.
The table top is comprised of  368 blocks, there are 6 different sizes and they are spaced out so that blocks of the same size never touch (sudoku power!).  The base of the table is really cool too. From this photo it looks like it's just painted black, but look a little closer . . .

and you'll see that it's actually burnt! It's a Japanese technique called Shou-sugi-ban.  It creates a beautiful texture.

Once The Man finished up the table we began our hunt for the perfect dining room chairs.

The table is so strange that it was really hard to find the right fit.  At first we tried out chairs at Ikea.

(The white chair with wooden legs and the ghost chair are not from Ikea, I just loved and wanted them)

Many of the chairs looked liked they'd do just fine in photos, but up close it was a whole different story. There are many things I am happy to buy at Ikea but furniture doesn't seem to be one of them.  When we went in we saw that all of the chairs in our price range were just too cheap, and any chairs that were decent looking just weren't worth the price.  We sat there contemplating buying the cheapest chairs (the all black with metal legs for 24.99) just for the time being, so we could sit somewhere in our house, but even that seemed like a waste when we flipped the chair around and saw how easily the "finish" a.k.a. black paper, had pealed off the particle board.

It was impossible to find and cheap and classy chair option in Chicago . . . until The Man typed "cheap furniture Chicago" into google.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Those three magic words lead him to a place called Interior Express Outlet.  It's a warehouse in a strange vacant area near the airport, and it's chock-full of decently priced, great looking knock offs of chairs that we had never even considered, due to their price everywhere else.  Like fantasy home chairs, your wildest dream chairs, wishful Wednesday chairs! EAMES CHAIRS!!!

That's right, those beautiful, goes with everything, you can't find them for less than $250.00 a piece chairs that we never thought could possibly exist in our own home were only $55.00 each! $55!! AHHHHH!! I'm in love, and his name is Eames Shell Chair.

And now everything is together and we feel like fancy grown-ups, with a fancy custom made dinning room table and six fancy shell chairs, all in our fancy dinning room. And we stare at it lovingly while we eat dinner off of $12 tv trays in the living room . . . where the tv is.