Kitchen Table

I'm so excited we finally got our kitchen table. So to you a kitchen table may not mean much, but this kitchen table has history.

We first appreciated the kitchen table at my aunt's house. (Hi Aunty Shirene!) It's a counter height table with barstool height chairs. It's a grown-ups table. No need to tell the kids to get their grubby hands off the table; they can't even reach it. You don't actually sit on the seats (unless you've had one too many and are afraid you'll fall) you sort of just lounge, leaning back against the chair.

I like more modern designs, my husband likes more traditional. Me: Glass & Steel. Him: Wood. We agreed we'd furnish our home with wood pieces as long as the had clean, sleek, modern lines. No carvings of cherubs and other such delights. No feeling of the furniture watching you as you watch TV. So when we saw the table at my aunt's, we were impressed. She told us where she got it and we said hey we'd give it a try.

By the way, her house was the midpoint between Boston (where I'm from) and North Carolina (where I was moving to). So life's a whirl because this a week before the wedding and I'm moving. After the wedding and honeymoon we're back in North Carolina settling into married life. I'm unpacking my boxes that the dropped off 1.5 weeks before and laying out the new space. I probably should mention I'm an architect by training and it's sheer lack of funding that I didn't redesign the entire house during this point. So here we are in the midst of the furniture capital of Ameica. We start browsing and our hearts keep going back to the table at auntie's. We keep looking. Nothing moves us. It's on back order until mid-December and it's October. We look at another counterhight table they have, but only in ginger (it's not a color, people, it's a spice) and ebony.

As a designer, I want exactly what I want. Heck, as an only child, I want exactly what I want. I've come to terms with the fact that sometimes "exactly what I want" doesn't exist. I either have to accept a substitution or create it myself. So my husband suggest the ebony table cause it's available and it costs less than auntie's (in a dark cherry finish). So we go back and forth and I'm just shy of pitching a fit in the store because the ebony is too dark and it's worth a few extra dollars to get exactly what you want. Needless to say we walked away that day with no table. I was a little too emotionally attached to a table that wasn't mine and needed to regroup and think about the best course of action.

It's now early November and we're hosting Thanksgiving dinner with no table. So we try again. Again nothing appeals to us. We decide we'll order the cherry counter-height table and rent a table for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving goes well and the table arrives. So now we have the joy of assembling the table.

*Fast Forward 6.5 years: The table has traveled from NC to our new home in Iowa. It has survived hot cookies sheets from the oven (only a little of the veneer melted) and I've learned that it is not a satisfactory cooling surface for cookie sheets. We no longer leave anything near the edge of the table since we are now parents to a set of grubby little hands with an adorable but inquisitive child attached to said hands. All in all it's a great table and I'm glad we waited for it. I'm sure it'll have it's own stories of one too many glasses of spilled milk by the time we're done with it. And even though the small child can climb up into the barstool height chair by herself, I still like that I feel like a grown-up when I sit at the table.