How Loving Animals Led to a New Dining Room

Everyone who knows me is aware that I'm an animal freak. I just love them! While at the home of friends a couple of months ago, their teenage daughter invited me out to the garage to see their new kittens since she knew I'd been anxious to meet the little guys. While I was petting the kittens, her mom came and joined us out there a few minutes later and apologized for the mess in the garage. They had a bunch of furniture and stuff stacked in there, waiting for a garage sale.

I'd noticed that their dining room chairs were in there. I mentioned to my friend a few days later that I was interested. I've been wanting a new dining room set, as what I have is small, and it's what I bought straight out of college. I'm ready for something bigger and nicer. When I was at their house again a couple of weeks ago for a youth swim party, she invited me to go out to the garage to look at the chairs if I was still interested. I was. I asked her how much they wanted for them because I would like to buy them. She said she needed to talk to her husband, and she'd get back to me.

When she called about them later, she said that they wanted to just give them to us! I offered to pay, but they wouldn't take any money. What a kind and generous blessing! After we brought them home, I put them in the living room so I could clean them. Doogie took to the chairs immediately, and gave me a rare pose for the camera, then promptly fell asleep.





I still needed a table, though. I headed to a consignment shop in town where I'd seen a table I really liked back in May. I didn't figure it would still be there, and I was right. However, at the very back of the store was a large table with dropped leaves on both sides. It looked perfect for our needs, so I asked how much it cost. I was told it was $200. As Steven and were looking it over again and taking some measurements, the shop lady came back and said, "I can actually do you better. I can take $149!" Wow! And we didn't even ask for a lower price!

We decided to take it. As I was paying, she told me that I was really getting a good deal as the table had started out in the store at $600. Nice!

After the table was delivered, I cleaned it with Murphy's Oil Soap. While crawling underneath it to clean under there, I found the maker's mark: Heritage Henredon. This table is good stuff! I think it's circa 1950s, but I'm not really sure. After a good cleaning, I went over it with Howard's Restore-a-Finish. The table looks fabulous now!



Everything is a bit large for the space, as our dining room is quite small. We spent a good amount of time over the weekend trying to find the best configuration for the table, but we finally settled on the perfect set-up.




We had to move the couch a bit forward in the living room to accomodate the table and chairs, which means we lost a tiny bit of space in the living room. The rocking chair that sat by the back door was suddenly too large to fit. That worked out, however, because we still had a 6th dining chair that needed a place. We put it where the rocking chair used to be, and moved the rocker to our bedroom.



The kitty condo caused a new problem. It used to sit right by the back door, and Doogie loved it there. There was no longer any space for it, and he was wandering around by the door looking for it. I opted to put it under the dining chair. He was miffed about that at first, but after two days of glaring at it, he decided it was okay, after all.



Steven and I are both thrilled with our new dining room. It's all beautiful, high-quality furniture, and it cost me less than $200! And to think it all came about simply because I adore animals and wanted to pet some kittens.