Smaller Furniture, Smaller Space

We've lived in our house for over 5 years now.  Nowadays, my goal is to fix one thing per month, but sometimes it ends up being several things in one month, like it was this month.

First, I went looking for ants under my kitchen sink and discovered water instead....which led to a visit from the plumber, a new kitchen faucet, a new outdoor faucet, and a new faucet in our bathroom.  Then, we were given some hand me down lawn furniture from our neighbor.  I was thankful for it, but wasn't sure how things would go together.  I just wanted things to match.  That led to me spray painting a black table to go with the two green chairs in the front, spray painting a table for the patio, getting a cabinet at Aldi, and another spray painting project waiting for me.  But, it also led to my patio finally having seating and looking like a patio where people gather!  Yahoo!

Then on Saturday, amidst the rain, I went garage saling.  Rain normally shuts down garage sales, but I thought I'd take a chance because the rain came on mid-morning just as I was leaving my house with my middle daughter who is a shopper and enjoys going with me.  There was a community that had a lot of garages so I took a chance and found several garage sales!  Sami and I found two baseball gloves that the girls needed to play catch for $5 (which saved me $55 and another shopping trip), a picture for our kitchen for $1, a used Vera Bradley purse/bag for my mom for $2 (which she loved), and a new Vera Bradley purse for my church bag for $2 in that neighborhood.  Sami found a really cool, fun scarf, too!  Then, we headed to a church where I found a 1950s aluminum chicken roaster with the rack in it in amazing shape.  But, my find of the day was really a table and three chairs that I found for $15.

I realized a while back that I would love to have a smaller table in our kitchen with chairs.  The table we had in it was way too large for the space and you had to squeeze by the edges to get to the back of the table.  But, it hasn't been on our radar to replace it.  Furniture can be expensive and we had something that worked--sort of.

But, when I found this table--in the rain--I asked the man how much it was.  He said $20.  I offered him $15 and he accepted my offer.  We loaded it into my van (the table and all 3 chairs) and I headed home.   When I arrived home, I waited and left it in the van.  I wasn't exactly sure how my husband was going to feel about it.  But, after a few minutes, I told him I'd bought a table and chairs.  His reaction told me that he knows how much garage saling means to me--I enjoy the treasure hunting. So, I brought the chairs and table up to the front porch and he took a look at them.

He liked them.

So, we moved our kitchen table into the school room and set up the new table, which really brings me to the point of the whole story.  We live in a house built in the 1950s.  We have no vaulted ceilings or really large rooms.  What we do have are rooms that are smaller and when we put the new table and chairs I realized something that makes sense...  Our house is older, so older style furniture fits better in it.  The new table and chairs is significantly (!) smaller than our table that we bought fifteen years ago from Cost Plus World Market--picture larger round table (even without the leaves) and larger chairs with a tall back.  The table that had been in our kitchen was designed with a modern, newly constructed home built some time between the 1990s and the present--with large rooms and tall ceilings.  It can be deceiving to see furniture in a store.  Furniture stores are huge and have very tall ceilings!  Buying a table and chairs that was built during the time period when our home was built makes sense to me now as to why it fits so much better in our kitchen than our old table.

I checked the chairs on ebay and found that they sell for about $300 each.  They are Ethan Allen (a store that I haven't ever even set foot in because I know it's expensive).  But, the chairs and the table aren't worth anymore to me because of their worth on ebay.  Their value to me is that they fit in our kitchen and I can finally walk by the table and get the pans that I store behind the table without having to squeeze by the table!  I am grateful every time I pass by the table.  But, I'm also thankful for the lessons I'm learning about choosing furniture that best fits the space it's intended for.