The One(s) That Got Away: Furniture I wish we'd kept.

When I got home last night, Chad showed me a photo of a dresser he painted yesterday. I immediately proclaimed we were keeping it. In fact, I couldn't understand why it wasn't already upstairs in our bedroom. And then he burst my bubble - the gorgeous giant won't fit up our stairs, and around the corner...yep, it's that big. And Chad is pretty much the tetris master, so when he says something won't fit, it's either because he hates it {and thinks telling me it won't fit is nicer} or it truly won't fit. In this case, I know he loves the dresser as much as I do. So.....it's going to the Carver store. To sell. To someone else. Sad face {for me}. Today I started thinking about all the other pieces I wish we'd kept, or could have kept, over these last 3 years in business. People always assume we've got the most amazing house filled with the most amazing furniture. You know that saying about the cobbler's kids having no shoes? That's us. With furniture. We don't have all the most amazing furniture, because: 1. We have a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty house. For real. It's old, and cozy, and we love it. It was partially renovated before we bought it, and the old owners did an awesome job opening up the main level. But, small house + very few walls = not much space for furniture. 2. We're busy! This might sound like a silly excuse, but often we find amazing pieces we intend to put in our house, and we leave them up in the back of our warehouse to paint/refinish "when we have time." You know how that story ends....and in this case, we've had times the store is so busy, we run out of furniture, and we've dug into our "personal" stash in storage to put in the store... Don't get me wrong....we have a few incredible, wouldn't-give-them-up-for-the-world, pieces of furniture. And a few others that are nice, but really just space fillers until we find that perfect piece. We also have a bedroom without nightstands, and that is just begging for a storage bench at the end of the bed. We have a living room currently without a coffee table, because Delainey started walking last week, and our warehouse cart's sharp edges are suddenly a bit of a hazard {it's staying in storage until she's older...it's one of those keeper pieces}. But I still have a mental list of the ones that got away. In case you all want to admire them from afar, and add them to your "wish list" {or Pinterest list} of furniture pieces, here they are:   Oh, that orange pigeon coop. I found it on craigslist about a year into us owning a store. A picker in WI had it, and I wanted it so badly - I convinced Chad to drive across the border to pick it up. Some of the wood doors looked like the pigeons, or maybe some predator, had chewed them up, but it was INCREDIBLE. I still dream about it. We weren't even engaged yet, and I was talking about putting it in one of our bedrooms upstairs for our future kid's toys. Those damn stairs....this one wouldn't fit either, or I would NEVER have given it up! The only continuous wall space in our house where it WOULD fit is where our couch sits. I should have sold the couch.... And lastly, this cabinet. We got it from some folks in Edina who were moving & couldn't take it. They'd purchased it from an antique store that told them it came from a bicycle shop in Chicago. It makes sense, with all of the little drawers, that tools & parts could have been stored in this guy. The back of the cabinet, and all but the faces of the drawers, is metal. The wood was so beautiful, we didn't have to do a thing to it. As we now search for perfect "display only" pieces for the Minneapolis store, I think of this guy often - he would have been perfect, and then we could have kept him! {because there was NO WAY} this would fit anywhere in our current house... Another time, I'll show you the very few pieces in our home that are "for keeps."  Do you have any furniture that got away?