Furniture sets from large retailers are just so…blah. Although, when you need to fill a room in a pinch, buying the dining room display makes life a lot easier! With our recent move from Oregon to Salt Lake City (SLC), we vowed to take our time to find unique dining furniture and never buy a set from a catalog again.

Our table now is a set from World Market, and it’s served its purpose for many years, but the table is way too small in our 100 year-old bungalow dining room. Some of you may be able to hand-pick furniture from five different stores and throw a room together in a weekend, but it’s in my nature to over-think most home decorating purchases. What if I found something I liked even better a week later?!

Finding Unique Dining Room Ideas In Catalogs

I know I just stated we would never buy furniture sets from a catalog, and I meant it. What I’m talking about is selecting different pieces from various resources, like CB2, Joss & Main, and local second-hand stores to create a dining room design that looks like it had been collected over time.

After weeks of looking through catalogs (as a new homeowner, you can imagine all the “new resident” mailings we get?), Houzz.com, and Pinterest, I think we’ve landed on a unique dining room combination that’s modern yet traditional. The table is from West Elm, and we found the chairs at the Overstock.com warehouse for nearly half off the sales price. I’m thinking two tufted chairs for the head of the table and two charcoal-gray ghost chairs along each side.

The only downside here is that I’ve, once again, mulled over my decision for too long and the chairs are probably gone. At least now we know the look we’re going for, so we can steal a deal the next chance we get. What do you think, love it or leave it?