The Story of a Table

Several people have inquired about my kitchen table in this post, so I thought I would share the story of how it came to be mine.

A little over a year ago, I was perusing Craigslist (as I often do).  Months before I had been on the search for a particular type of pedestal style dining table, but my search had been fruitless, and I had mostly left the matter alone.  We had a perfectly nice table that was being loaned to us by Philip's parents.  Even still, I had the term 'table' saved on my trusty little Craigslist app, and I would peruse it from time to time, just to pass the time (perfectly normal, right? :)  Well, one fine October Sunday I happened to notice a listing under the Antiques category for a pine table.  It wasn't the best picture, and the table was sitting in a dirty old garage, but I knew right away that this table and I needed to meet.  Especially considering that the seller was only asking $125 for it!

I quickly placed a call to the seller and was thrilled to learn that it was still available and that I could come to see it the next day!  I was beside myself with excitement and spent the next twelve hours or so requiring very little food or sleep on account of my nerves (I will leave it up to you to decide if you think this is an exaggeration or not).  Then, the following evening, I removed the car seats from the back of our Honda Pilot, thanked my hubby for the fact that he was about to face the dinner hour (read: the witching hour) alone with the kids, and set out on the 30 minute drive to meet this little gem.

My drive took me through beautiful country roads leading into the rural part of Mechanicsville, VA, until I finally arrived at a long driveway that took me through the woods to a beautiful old home owned by a very lovely couple (don't worry--I had my taser in my purse in the event this couple was not so lovely!).  The Mrs. was an artist and the Mr. enjoyed creating furniture as a hobby (come to find out we had a mutual friend in Richmond who is a furniture-maker; such a small world--love that about Craigslist!).

He showed me the table, and it was love at first sight.  She was made of pine, had great Parsons style legs, and she was big!  Could seat eight people, I imagined!  Icing on the cake was when I found out the table was used in a Henrico elementary school back in the '70s (there were even little paint smears to prove it)!  Ah, a vintage piece with a story--does it get any better than this?  I explained to the seller that I had $100 cash and that I could write him a check for the remaining $25.  Then that fine gentleman told me not to worry about the remaining $25!  Amazing.

I brought my new little treasure home and stored it in our garage so I could clean it up and seal the wood since it was raw pine (unfortunately the product I researched for accomplishing this didn't work well and you can now see lots of olive oil spots all over our table...this was very distressing to me, but I'm trying to embrace it for the character it adds?).

I cleaned her up and had to get my kid's approval of course. (pictured in our old house, oh how tiny my babes were!)

The moral of the story is of course that Craigslist is your friend.  If you do not already, you must get to know dear Craig.  He will not let you down, all you need is persistence and perhaps the slightest tendency towards OCD :)

Now, who's coming over for dinner?