Table for 10

One piece of furniture I may have been more excited about than even this house is our new farmhouse table. The two tables we had in our rental weren’t going to cut it in the eat in area of this house. We don’t set up a formal dining area ever. We aren’t those kind of people. Formal dining at our house involves paper plates and paper towels! I don’t own a single piece of china so I don’t need a room to display it. We need to be able to practically live in every room in our house! We used our previous formal dining room as a homework/craft room. Harper called it the coloring room.

I knew I wanted a table that would fit lots of people around it. MAJ W insisted it seat at least 8 adults. I measured the space while we were having our inspection done and realized that a long, rectangular table wasn’t going to work. I also didn’t want a round table or to have to deal with putting a leaf in and out of it. Did you know that dining tables are very expensive? Well, big, ‘nice’ tables are expensive, at least for my budget conscious mind.

My friend in the great state, Kim, of Flint Creek Farm, builds tables and, in my dream world, she was going to build me one, but logistically I couldn’t figure out how on earth to get it from there to here. I considered going north a couple of hours to get one made, but transportation costs were a little prohibitive, as well. Bottom line, if I wanted a large farmhouse table within my budget, I had to find someone local to build it. After talking to someone about 30 minutes across town, I put out a plea on Facebook and a friend recommended the guy that built her table.

So I called John, of H34 Design Co, and told him what I wanted – a 5 foot x 5 foot square table. Nothing too fancy, but it had to be square and it had to fit 8 people around it. Turns out John lives 5 minutes from me and attends the same church we do. He’s a brand new daddy and I think was a little hesitant to take on my building project, but I assured him I wasn’t in a huge rush! Upon arranging pick up, I learned that he’s in sales and one of my best friends’ husbands is one of his customers. Crazy! I joke that this particular friend needs to run for mayor because he knows everybody and after helping us move this table, he’ll never offer to help me do anything ever again!

I already had these X back chairs from a previous table and just painted them, well, am in the process of painting them, the same color as the table legs. I’ll finish up the little details on them once the kiddos are back in school in 15 days. Am I the only one counting down? 

I am grateful for the way this whole table thing worked out and I love this table so much. I’m just a tiny bit protective of it. No markers or crayons allowed!! The square fits our space perfectly. We tested its seating capacity out a few weeks ago and had 10 adults sitting around it. We could’ve squeezed another couple, but they may not have had room to sit down their tacos!