New Dining Table + Chairs

It’s my first Thrift Store Thursday!!! Because I am in charge around here I have decided that Craigslist counts as a thrift store. Sounds legit, right? I am thrilled to introduce you to my latest (and possibly greatest) Craigslist score…

I have wanted a new dining room table since, well, since we moved into our house. The Ikea table we’ve been using was perfect in our old house, but really sucked in our current dining room. Don’t you think?

But I swear it looked great in our old house. Right? Sorry the pick is so crappy. (See more on our kitchen renovation here.)

I’ve been wanting to MAKE a table forever. Something rustic. Something like this expensive table from Restoration Hardware. But it just hadn’t happened. I’ve been busy and blah, blah, blah.

I’ve searched CL tons of times for dining tables and never liked one enough to go for it. My absolute minimum requirements were:
1) that it has pedestals or tresses or something other than four stupid legs so you can never get enough chairs around it
2) it’s sturdy (because boy was that Ikea one NOT sturdy)
3) that it be BIG, like 12 chairs big. We have hosted the past four Christmases and at least three Thanksgivings and our family keeps getting bigger and bigger. Heck, when you are 5 people to start with and then you have people over, seating 8 is pointless.

So we had the grandparents over for my daughter’s birthday last Sunday and as we’re sitting around the Ikea table we are all talking about how much it sucks. So I brought out the laptop and showed my mom and MIL the table I had seen on CL a few weeks before. To make a longer story somewhat shorter, this is the pic that caught my eye. The seller seemed desperate now and was asking $200 OBO for the table + hutch + 4 chairs. (So funny because there are 5 chairs in the pic.) It was the table base that made me take notice. No stupid 4 legs! And with both leaves in the table is 110 glorious inches!!

We have a hutch (which is another awesome CL story) so I didn’t need that. And I didn’t need 4 chairs that wouldn’t match anything else. The lady said she’d take $100 for the table. I said I’d see about price once I got there. So hubby, the 3 kiddos, and I went to check it out. The woman lived in a high-rise. My younger kids were thrilled with the idea of riding the elevator. (If you don’t know I grew up in an apartment in NYC, so my suburban kids make me laugh, and cry.) I was so NOT THRILLED getting the table down the elevator. It took forever. I was going to offer $50 or $75 for the table. But when I told her I liked the chairs, too bad she didn’t have more, she told me she had 8. She gave us the table + 8 chairs for $100. It’s nice stuff!! I was thrilled. Again, not thrilled to get it down the elevator, but thrilled. We made one trip with the table + 2 chairs while the woman went to her storage unit to get the last 2 chairs. My oldest and I went back for the other 6 chairs.

Anyway, I think my husband was even more excited than I was. He had dinner right there the night we brought it home and said he felt like a king.

New dining room table and chairs from craigslist

I plan on redoing this whole room soon. Don’t judge. I think I will eventually reupholster the chairs, but it’s pretty low on my to do list right now. I think it really needs a rug to break up all that brown, but my kids would make a mess out of a rug in no time.

Here’s a few shots of the “legs” I sent to my brother. We have a friendly competition who can find the best bargains. He was so freakin jealous about the price I paid. He said it was my best deal yet! He got his dining room set at Raymour & Flanigan, and bragged about the sale price. Ha! He hadn’t been to our house since Christmas, but has already made a trip down to see our new table. NO JOKE! And he said the set looks even better in person.