My 30-year Quest for a Kitchen Table Has Ended

We’ve had a 30-year love/hate relationship with our kitchen table.

We LOVE not having to set our plates on our laps.

Everything else about it… hate.

Our original kitchen table was delivered at the end of the Reagan era…  It had a big chunk missing from the top… and  raw wood peeking through the dark cherry finish.

It was damaged to the point where the company pretty much gave it to us, and Mr. D&D filled and refinished it…but it never quite recaptured the original vibe.  But hey, we were headed towards diaperville…there were bigger fish to fry.

Eventually, we tried to replace it, approximately a million times, but we never found the exact table we wanted,

or couldn’t make it work,

or decided we wanted an antique harvest table…

liked the top but not the legs…

too expensive…

too cheap…

put in whatever reason you’d like, it was probably one of our reasons, too.

THEN…this past February, we hosted a team dinner for one of our sons.  Mr. D&D decided it would be cool to have a counter-height table to match the height of our kitchen island “so all the food could be served on the same level.”  

Really? THAT would be the concern of bunch of college students?

“Thank you for the almost amazing pasta dinner, Mrs. D.  If ONLY it had been served at the same height as the food on the island….”

“I think the food on this table doesn’t taste nearly as good as the exact same food served on the counter, Mrs. D.   I feel sick.   Do you have any Pepto?”

“I love these flowered paper plates and the classy plastic-wrapped utensil packets that even include the salt and pepper.  The foil-wrapped butter pads were also a really nice touch, …but, Damn!  This dinner could have been perfect…if only there had not been the visual interruption of the dual-height serving stations.”

 🤣

Please. Like they cared.

The only real issues were “Could the under-agers have beer”….(NO!) and “is there enough food” …(yes, for the next three months).

As, usual, I digress….

I like to make Mr. D  happy, and he was thinking “counter-height tables”.

Okay, honey, let’s set up a counter-height table.

We had a large Ikea desktop that had just been cast out of Oldest Daughter’s room. While on a road trip, we picked up some adjustable table legs at Menard’s (very fun home superstore with 300 locations dotting the midwest…but none where we live) and “voila”– instant counter-height table that looked a lot like this:

Wow…GORGEOUS, idn’t it?

Guess what?  Five months later it was still in our kitchen.

Why? Because some idiot (who looks just like me) decided to force a decision and hauled the old table to the curb.

That might have been a great idea…if only we were people who actually knew and then could find exactly what they wanted.

Sigh…

But good riddance!  Our family had long ago stopped using the old craptastic wooden table and we usually all huddled around the island in our too-tall barstools. Surprisingly, since the white desk/table appeared, we did start actually drifting back to “the table.”

Hmmm…

Decision One: we like hanging out a table that’s counter height.

The IKEA desk/table has no apron (i.e., wood frame on which the table top rests).  It also looks a tad like a headless albino giraffe on whose back our dinnerware rests.  BUT, the too-tall barstools DO slide right underneath.

It’s also really narrow (29″)…which works well in our over-furnished kitchen.

A quick search of counter-height tables shows many such long-legged animals…with and without aprons….but none that were as narrow.

I tend to like the ones with shelves underneath like this:

BUT (isn’t there always a “but”?) to accommodate a shelf, the top needs to be wide so that the chairs fit comfortably underneath.  We don’t have room for wide.  Also the lowest shelf would make it a challenge to easily sweep/vac/mop the “dust and doghair” that would surely settle underneath.

Then I found this Pottery Barn table…the shelves were great…the drop leaves don’t take up too much room…..

BUT it only seats four.  We need a table for six.  And it wasn’t counter height.

It’s an either/or world…do we want a narrow profile and space underneath to hide the chairs… or a shelf underneath that I could accessorize with cool baskets and white plates BUT requires a wider tabletop?

Tall, slim, or shelf; tall, slim or shelf?

Decision Two: shelf

Well…“shelf” is what I ORIGINALLY typed when I first drafted this post.  Since then, we decided that we liked a narrow table better…

…then I decided that with a slim table we would all be literally in each other’s faces while eating and went back to the wider table with a shelf

…then I looked at our little sitting area that we use every day, where Mr. D&D stubs his toe every morning on our bench/coffee table, and remembered we already have too much “stuff” in the kitchen

…then I mentally knocked the wall out of the back of the house and added three to five cantilevered feet to the sitting area

…then I went to the computer and searched “cantilevered sitting areas” and came up with this image that bears ZERO resemblance to our home

…then I realized how MUCH TIME I WAS WASTING!!!

I went back to brainstorming about what we wanted in a TABLE.

I think an apron would be necessary for visual balance if I were adding a shelf.  It becomes a little tricky here because the chairs DO have to sit underneath the table adequately so that diners can eat over their plates.  Our island has a 10″ overhang; which, on a table with shelf would take us back to a wiiiiide tabletop.

Wait?  Did I just say, “If I were adding a shelf?” !!!

This is starting to sound like I was thinking of making a table.

DO I NOT HAVE ENOUGH INCOMPLETE or DRAWING BOARD PROJECTS?

NO! NO! NO!  Stay focused!

Focused? Me?

Naaah…

So, yeah…I made a table!

AND…rather than THINK I was going to make a table and then get distracted by whatever catches my attention next week…I didn’t write post this post until the table was finished!

THERE IS A FINISHED TABLE IN MY KITCHEN THAT WE DON’T HATE.

Now all I have to do is write the post about it… 🙂   And find chairs (Bahahahaha).

In the interim, you may see it in the background on my Instagram posts.

I don’t want to be a big cheater here.  I WILL get that post written.  But…Christmas lights!!!

I also have to write posts about how I painted more than half of the inside of our house, made new cushions and window treatments for the back hall, updated our outdoor lighting and a few other things.

Sigh… I can DO, or I can post.  I seem to NOT be able to do both right now. But hey…I promised I’d never flood your inbox, right?

However, if you made it this far down the page, you are very kind and deserve something for your time…so here’s a little sneak peek at the table from when it was in progress.

This is the base, primed.

And this is the top…which is hiding the apron.  The shelf has NOT yet been ruled out.

Let’s see what will happen first.  Will I get the post written, or find chairs?

Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets!

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