Article Surfing Archive

As you're finishing your home furnishing purchases, you should always make sure you have the final pieces that not only look great in the room, but also add any final functional touches you may need. For instance, in your living room, you have all the essentials, but you still have a lot of little things sitting around that you wish you had a place to put away. Or maybe your entryway looks great, and has a large vase as a d'cor accent, but you could really use a place to put your keys and the mail when you walk in the door. You need console tables to take care of the job.

Console tables are essentially tables that will give you the added bonus of being able to have a little storage as well. Whether it's a drawer or shelf under the surface, console tables help you keep track of more of your stuff.

Before you buy, you need to make sure you are purchasing the perfect table for the space. Here are some considerations to make:

1. Height ' f it's a freestanding console table, as the only piece of furniture against a wall, you have a lot of flexibility here. But, if you are putting it up against a sofa, chair or piece of furniture you may have to look more closely at that to make sure it's a complementary height.

2. Spatial Presence ' How much attention is your console table going to demand in a room? Is it a supporting player or a focal point? This will determine not only it's location and placement but also material and style and many other aspects of what you will be looking for in this piece of furniture.

3. Materials ' Even though you may like bamboo, it may not be a good choice in a console table. If the look doesn't fit the space you could have a contrasting piece. You don't want your friends coming into the room and cringing at the tackiness of the overall effect. Instead, if you shop online you can look at your room as you shop and see pieces that will fit and even add to the room but not take away from it.

4. Quality ' You can tell quality by studying a piece. Is it finished looking? Does it wobble? Is it uneven? A finely made piece of furniture will have no such flaws. If it's wood don't turn up your nose at wood veneers. It may not be that old cheap wood veneer that your parents had. These days many are made up of exotic woods and are stunning. There are veneers that are printed and others with inlayed woods. You can tell the difference by looking at the seams. If there is a metal piece in between the seams of the wood pieces, that's a telltale clue you've got the real thing.

The joints are very important. Are there gaps? Do they finely match? Do they look like they were just thrown together or are they a beautifully finished piece of furniture.

Does the wood match, the grain match, were they intentionally put together or were a bunch of pieces picked off the shelf and tossed together just to make the piece?