A Special Mid-Century Table Find

Now that everything’s out in the open after last week’s emotional tales, I’m ready to dish on other things.

For one thing, I unleashed a new board on Pinterest dedicated to designing our new pad, so go ahead, check out some images that are making us giddy. And be forewarned, from here on out I’m just going to talk about the house now as if it were a 100% sure thing; we should know more this week, nothing has been finalized yet.

And secondly, I’m not sure whether or not you’d know this: We’ve been storing a huge table in our house since early November. In our sunroom. And in our living room. (You would have had to have watched my latest home tour video from last fall closely to notice it.)

See, Pete and I found and fell in love with the beautiful, hand crafted Danish modern mahogany table last November at the The Shops on West Ridge (I actually alluded to the event here). The Night Of Lights event is a huge draw for The Shops, a co-op-like venue in Greece, NY, and it drew an equally humungous crowd the evening that we were there; everything in stock was offered at 20% off, and many other vendors had their own items discounted to sell, so when we found it, we couldn’t say no.

While it was sale priced to move at $295, with store discounts and a few gift cards, we actually only paid $125 for this beauty, a mere fraction of the price we might have paid buying a solid hardwood table from any retailer. We know from the seller that it was a handcrafted piece from a local woodworker who used it in his own home with his own family for decades. (The background of the next photo happens to be a clipboard, not the tabletop if you’re curious.)

The timing of the event and the subsequent purchase aligned perfectly with our cheery and mostly optimistic state after we had put an offer in on a house last fall. We already knew that the home’s open floor plan dining/living room would warrant a beautiful, huge table, and moreover, we knew that our current shoddy dining room table would never work well in the space. (Side note: The current dining room table seen here is in horrible condition–steer clear of Pier 1 if you’re looking for investment tables–mine was thankfully just a floor model marked down from $699 to $50, and I’m so glad I didn’t pay more because the surface has worn really poorly.)

Within the mid-century brick ranch house that we first fell in love with last October, the new table’s modern form and sheer size would have been perfect. We bought the table because, well, we wanted it for that house, but went into the investment knowing that if it didn’t end up fitting, or if we didn’t end up getting that house, or if the table wouldn’t work in another future house, we would just sell it and hope to get our money back. So, against the wall of the dining room it sat for months.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning just how big this new table is, because you’re probably asking yourself why we didn’t just replace our current table immediately when the new one came home (in two pieces, via two Jeep trips to The Shops). Measuring 8′ long and 42″ wide, it never would have fit. In fact, it extends 3 whole feet longer than our current table, so it would have either cut off a pass-through into the living room, or access to our sliding glass door. It would have looked ridiculously out of place with our small pendant lights.

The frame of the new table is also a bear, which is why it has held court in the sunroom since November.

But check out the pretty details, including the little metal feet.

Our only reservation about the table is that it’s slightly lower than our current table and most traditional tables, measuring 28″ from the ground instead of the common 30″. You wouldn’t think it would make much of a difference, but it does for knee space, which means we need to boost the height or source some slightly short chairs and hope that we can make it work.

Here I am, almost 6 months after the fact, still wondering if we’ll ever be able to put this table somewhere. We still hope it would work in the new home’s dining room (I did take measurements and am cautiously hopeful that it wouldn’t look oversized for the space).

In the meantime, it’s been in our house uselessly for so long that recently Julia asked us “how long that piece of wood was going to be against the wall.” “Seriously? You know it’s a tabletop. You were with us when we bought it.” “Oh, that’s right, the table, I forgot it was a table. A GIAAANNNNNNTTTTT table. Against the wall. Weird.” And she went about her coloring, and speaking of arts and crafts time, it’ll be a seriously great coloring surface someday. It’s solid, with no identifiable seams, and smoother than a baby’s bottom. It’s color, I adore, especially the way it pairs so nicely with the sideboard that I refinished last summer. It’s like it was meant to be.

Can’t wait to see it in place.