Lucky

When we moved, we kept all of our US furniture in storage back home.  Thus, we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on furniture out here.  So most of our stuff is from Ikea which I do like, but none of it is really that “special” or anything we would want to take home when we move back.  So I’ve been holding out for over a year to find a couple of nice pieces from the region that would be cool to bring back with us.  And now we finally found them.

I heard from a few friends that there was a cool “store” in Sharjah (the emirate on the other side of Dubai) that had a lot of nice wood furniture.  It's called Lucky's and is not especially easy to find, but I headed over there one weekend during Ramadan this year to check it out.  It was a bit warm since they don't have a/c and I couldn't drink anything because it was Ramadan--all I have to say is that it was a good thing Paul wasn't with me! ;)

There are 4 warehouses of this (this shot only shows about 1/10th of one warehouse)

We never really had another good chance to head over there until a couple of weeks ago when we stayed in Dubai for Thanksgiving and I really wanted Paul to come with me to help with the final decisions.  As we were driving into the mayhem that is Sharjah, Paul expressed his sentiments very keenly..."Anyone else would see this place and run away, but no, my wife is driving me right into the middle of it" :)  The traffic around there is pretty crazy and it's not exactly a place that I would want to linger, but it's where we needed to go.

We wanted to pick out a tv stand (really a sideboard, but that’s what we’re using it as) and a side table.  I was originally planning to get both of them in the recycled, painted wood that the side table is made of, but when we saw the sideboard, Paul really liked the rugged look of that so we went with it.

The sideboard is made out of reclaimed railroad ties and teak.  The side table is made from recycled, painted wood.  Both are from India.

The dark pieces are the railroad ties

 

The sideboard doesn’t really match anything else we have in our apartment (although we did have a bit of a mismatch already), but I think it will be a fun piece to have when we move back.  Hopefully it doesn’t cost us a fortune to ship because it is HEAVY!

After spotting this cute cage the first time I was there, I decided to go ahead and give it a new home :)