Kitchen Table

As I mentioned before, we'd been thinking about replacing our kitchen table with one that would be a little smaller, hopefully making the room feel less cramped. We looked around quite a bit, and decided that we liked the idea of buying used versus new. We found an old farm table that would need to be refinished, at an antique shop not too far away. Maybe the asking price was a little more than we wanted to pay, but we were close to buying it. We decided to think about it a couple more days, and as we were driving home, we saw another small shop we'd not noticed before, a store that had higher end furniture and items that had been donated, with proceeds that would then be donated to charity. Wow, is all I can say! It was jam packed with stuff, but so much cool stuff! We told them we were looking for a table, and they said there might be a small one in one of the rooms. We did have to look closely to find it ...

The store was about ready to close the first time we stopped by, so we went back the next day and ended up buying the table. I told a man working there, that this store was amazing, and he told me that he'd started the store a year ago, in his garage! I had also found a board book for little boy that was full of cars and animals and lots of details, his favorite kind of book. When I went up to pay for the table and book, I told the lady that my grandson would love this book, and then she told me to just take it ... We had also found six wooden press back chairs at another antique store in Hopkins that we liked, and went to buy those. The stain on the chairs is a bit darker than the table, but we like the contrast.

Jake and Brianna also needed a table for their place, and I decided to gift them the one we were replacing. What made this such a good idea in my mind, was that the table is an oak table that I had bought in the early 1980's, right after finishing nursing school. I had sanded, stained, and varnished all the pieces. And then Bruce, my new boyfriend at the time, had put the table together for me. I'm sure that Debbie probably got a little tired of seeing all the wood pieces laying all over our living room floor, complete with sanding paper, buckets of stain, and varnish. But I did finish my table, and I was very proud. Bruce then suggested that we also give them the four wooden chairs he'd made in high school. The complete table set would have sentimental meaning, and would stay in the family. They liked the idea! So on another very snowy, Minnesota day, we drove the table and chairs out to them.

It looks pretty good in their place! And, all of us have decided that we like our "new to us" table and chairs.