A Tale of Two Tablecloths

Last weekend, Wonderful Wife and I spent a rainy day exploring a couple of antique spots in the Cincinnati area. One of the spots we stopped at was Venice Pavilion Antiques in the hamlet of Ross, which is just to the northwest of the Cincy metroplex. We'd not been here before, but since the day was such a washout I didn't bring along my camera. You can still get an idea of the look of the place by visiting their website. What their site doesn't tell you, though it should, is that the building was once an entertainment hall back in the early 20th century. Housing a bowling alley and dance hall, the three stories now hold the wares of a fair amount of antique dealers - which are priced a little on the high end.

Nevertheless, Wonderful Wife did uncover this pink tablecloth for our recently purchased (second-hand, of course) dining table. I am most definitely not a fan of pink decor, but she was really fond of it so... why not?

Earlier in the day we had stopped in at one of our favorite Cincinnati-area antiquing spots - Covered Bridge Antique Mall in Mt. Healthy. This little hole-in-the-wall store has a lot of nice inventory that's very reasonably priced (hence the reason it's one of our favorite haunts). We picked up several items on this particular excursion, which I'll blog about a bit later, but one of our purchase left an awfully sour taste.

Wonderful Wife's mission on this trip was to find a tablecloth or two for the dining table, which I mentioned earlier in this post. Here at Covered Bridge, she found a nice-looking one for the reasonable price of $9.00. After we got back home and she spread it out on the table, she discovered the very obvious repair pictured below.

Now, I'm down with the whole "as-is" and caveat emptor aspect of antique buying, but I'm also a firm believer in full disclosure. Here's how the tablecloth was tagged:

Notice that there isn't a single mention of any damage or repairs. So in the end, for $9.00 (more than we paid for the fully intact pink tablecloth at Venice Pavilion) we are the not-so-proud owners of several yards of scrap fabric. Lesson learned. Always fully inspect any item, no matter how large, and be sure to avoid Booth #4 at the Covered Bridge Antique Mall in Mt. Healthy, Ohio.