Well, well, well... how the turntables...
Shortly after moving into my condo back in 2013, I decided it would be a good time to purchase my first dining room table. (Yes, I never had one at my apartment. Yes, I know that's kind of weird.)
This table-purchasing excursion turned into a WHOLE thing, which honestly would've made a fun post, too...
To sum up: My mom and aunt drove down for the weekend, and we purchased a quality cheap (oxymoron?) table from Wal-Mart that matched the color of my kitchen cabinets. The catch? None of us had a truck, and apparently lacked the foresight to realize the table box wouldn't fit in the car. Oops.
So we had to pile back in the car, drive across the highway to Home Depot to rent a truck, drive it back over to load up the table box, deliver it to my condo and carry the box upstairs, and then drive back to Home Depot to drop off the truck rental and pick up the car. Phew.
Then we spent that night putting the table together, and discovered that while it was a perfect match for my cabinets and other furniture... it was a wee bit too big for the space.
Condos are small. My "dining room" was just a slab of tile next to the kitchen island. The table took up the entire space and you could barely sit around it once the chairs were added. Whoops.
At some point after that, in discussing the situation, the idea of extendable tables came up. What if I got a small round table that would fit better in the space, but that could be extended to be longer for when I had parties?
This idea stemmed from my grandparents' house, of course. For at least my entire life, they've had a small, round kitchen table in their very small kitchen/dining room that they extend for holidays so everyone could sit around the table.
What a great idea! That would be perfect!
But it turns out those kinds of tables aren't super common anymore, and when you do find one, it costs thousands of dollars - even from discount furniture shops. Never mind! Maybe one day...
Fast forward 5 years, and I leave the condo and move into my house. Fast forward another 2 years to present-day. My trusty old Wal-Mart table has gotten me by for a while, and it fits fairly well in my new house with the slightly larger dining room area.
However, when I have dinner parties and can't fit everyone around the 6-seat table... I'm still forced to add a folding card table to the end that is lower than the actual table, and feels like a "kiddy table." It's not a huge deal, but it's not great to force guests to sit at a little baby table. Funny, of course, but not super hospitable.
At least you can hardly tell in strategically-angled pictures?Then comes Saturday, April 10, 2021.
As I'm perusing Facebook, I get a notification that someone posted to my neighborhood Facebook group:
What's this? The table of my dreams?
"Heavy, Sturdy, well loved, but better yet-FREE TABLE with 4 leaves! It’s 47” circular at its smallest, 47” x 94” with all 4 leaves in it. Leaves are 11” a piece. Can disassemble for easier transport! First come first serve, trying here before posting on any other pages."
Look at all that extendable majesty!
It's perfect! It even matches the color of my cabinets in the new house - brown. It will look great next to my cherry china cabinet, too. And it extends? To 94"?!?! And it's FREE?!?!?
As you can imagine, I commented right away: "I'll take it!!!"
Today, she and her husband delivered the table and we carried it in - and it's absolutely perfect. Well, not actually perfect - there are lots of scratches and it wobbles - but I'm not going to be that picky about a free table. Those things can be fixed! (Already crammed some scraps of paper under the legs to even out the wobbling.)
"You're everything to me..."
I can finally host dinner parties and have everyone fit around the same table!
This is going to be fantastic.
Sidenote: I don't know if young 20-something Allison who started this journal would've ever considered a free hand-me-down table as an exciting reason to update, but... here's to being in your late 30s, I guess?
Sidenote 2: Although she did once write a similar post about buying a yellow chair from Goodwill, so... actually... I retract my previous statement.