Dining Table? Ding Ding Ding

For those of you sick of hearing about the shore, you'll be happy with today's post. We're going back to Brooklyn. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember my dining room table dilemna.



This table was here long before us. The woman who sold us our house had every scrap of junk the last owner had in here (I'm told it was filled to the rafters before) except this table. So I feel a strange loyalty to it, as if it deserves to stay since it suffered neglected for so long. And I do like how it looks despite its bare spots, scratches and damage. All that said, its just not very functional for us because of the way the legs cut into the space under the table. Its huge but only lets us put 6 chairs around it. We investigated having a leaf made which would add some more space but it wasn't going to give us much and it was going to cost $3K between the leaf and refinishing. Um, no.


So we just tossed up our hands and let it lie for a while. On Christmas, we butted up a plastic folding table and called it a day. We never invited more than 4 people for dinner. I just wasn't willing to part with a small fortune for something I wasn't excited about.

Fast forward to last week. I had a few minutes to kill so I stopped into Housing Works, a NYC based thrift whose proceeds go to charity. Been in there a ton of times but have never bought anything. This time was different. What was staring back at me but a dining table, calling its siren song. It had little brass accents on the feet! And it was a pretty shape! And had a leaf! The best part was the price tag - $225! Ding, ding, ding!



Its by no means perfect - it’s a bit scratched and it won't seat a ginormous amount of people - but for the price, I can't complain.

Are you wondering 'What about the original table?'. At first I thought I'd just give it away. No big deal. I'm generally good about letting things I'm not using go - except for this. In a move that will likely earn me a spot on the next season of Hoarders, I just can't seem to part with it. Its sitting in our middle room right now taking up all the space as we figure it out. We are going to try to disassemble it and store in the basement somewhere. (Yes, we are turning into those people that store furniture they know for a fact they will never, ever use again.) We'll see how that goes. Its not like we have a whole lot of experience disassembling old furniture that isn't meant to come apart here. Until then, the table is safe and sound.

Once we sort that tiny detail out, I'll be excited to have a dining table with a little more room to entertain around. I do wish the table wasn't quite so shiny...i feel like I have enough shine in the floors and mirror and lighting that I wish the table was a bit more worn down generally. Is there a way to do that without ruining it? And I still need to find suitable chairs (I still like the gold chairs but I would eventually like to have something more permanent looking). If I'm ever lucky enough to find reasonably priced balloon back chairs, I might die happy.

I just might need to invite some people over to celebrate!