No Mere Coffee Table

My brother recently moved into a new apartment and we have been furniture hunting as a result. In particular, he needed a coffee table. My brother is a tad...well...particular. He didn’t want just any coffee table, he wanted the perfect coffee table. Six furniture stores later, we finally found one. 

In short, over the past week I’ve seen a LOT of coffee tables. Glass ones, wood ones, metal ones, round ones, square ones, large ones, small ones, modern ones, traditional ones...you name it. I never knew there was such variety! However, my personal favorite by far (and by this I mean the one that amuses me most, not the one I would actually buy) was a coffee table that opened up into a TV tray. 

That’s right. A TV tray. Eating on the couch in front of the television is now even easier! It struck me as the kind of contraption one sees on a late night infomercial...“This may seem like a mild-mannered coffee table, but no! There’s more! Wow and amaze your friends and family!” Part of me feels like it’s one more harbinger of humanity’s downfall. Fewer than 100 years ago people used to change into formal dinner attire just to eat family dinner. This seems a bit overboard to me. But now? Just pull on your sweatpants and pop up the leaf on the coffee table (for a person living alone, this is forgivable; for everyone else...not so much). 

Mostly though, I found this coffee table incredibly amusing. I picture it being most appropriate for the kind of person who never really outgrew the Transformers phase they went through as a kid and now loves multi-use furniture. Complementing the coffee table/TV tray would be a futon sofa and those storage ottomans that also double as extra seating. Perhaps even a reversible rug. Dinner would be served on those dishes that aren’t deep enough to be a bowl but are too deep to be considered a regular plate. 

Forget the rewarding feeling of helping my brother set up his first solo household. The real highlight of furniture shopping was definitely the discovery of this coffee table. Thank you to whomever came up with the idea...your hard work has kept this nester highly entertained.