Musical Tables and Chairs

When we moved out of our rental in Placitas, we moved into two different houses; John’s original house in Placitas, and my new townhome in Santa Fe. That required sorting all our stuff.

In general, I took the older, smaller, funkier furniture up to Santa Fe, and left the nicer, newer, larger furniture for Placitas. That makes sense for several reasons. First of all, the Santa Fe place is just smaller and funkier! And, we don’t consider the Santa Fe townhome as our primary or permanent residence. Also, the older, smaller, funkier furniture tended to be furniture that I had collected more than 12 years ago, before John and I met. Since I had picked it out on my own, it isn’t necessarily his favorite (sort of like how his house isn’t my favorite, but that’s a different topic).

My sorting method turned out to have limitations. We owned 3 tables – two full sized rectangular tables with an extension leaf, and one small round table. By my system, the small round one, which I purchased in approximately 1997, should have gone to Santa Fe (smaller, older, funkier).

But the Placitas house has both a dining room and a very small breakfast nook (more like a half-circle bump out) that isn’t remotely large enough for a regular table, so we put it there instead. The breakfast nook is John’s favorite spot, so it definitely needed a table.

Instead, I brought up to Santa Fe an old, full-sized table I got cheap on Craigslist in Albuquerque in approximately 2007. (This mediocre photo was actually taken to show how well my new new rug matches the curtains, but it’s what I’ve got that shows the table.)

Here’s a better photo of the original craigslist table up in Santa Fe, although in this case, the photo was taken to show the new lights. Who takes a picture of an old table?

We initially put in Placitas the newer, nicer table, which we had bought new for the house in California. Here’s a photo of it in the California house. It’s hard to believe I owned a house that looked like that.

Here’s the same table in Placitas. (Yes, there’s still moving boxes in the living room.)

Turns out, John doesn’t like the newer, nicer California table, because when the expansion leaf is taken out (because the Placitas dining room is much smaller than the one in California), the table legs are in the way of the chair legs and people legs! Bump-ouch. Plus, it’s more modern in style than is ideal for either house in New Mexico.

So what to do?

I decided to buy a small round table for Santa Fe, and bring the older Craigslist table back to John. I went to my favorite local store (Jackalope), and accidentally fell in love with a full-size rectangular table instead of a small round one. And it was 60% off!

I couldn’t resist. Look at that lovely wood grain pattern.

It’s very basic in style, which matches the casual, traditional, rural feel of New Mexico. In my mind, it is our nicest table, and it’s definitely not a small, round one that I envisioned for Santa Fe, so we brought it home to Placitas.

But John didn’t like it there. It’s quite blond, and John prefers darker furniture (and flooring, curtains, etc.,) than I prefer. You may remember this – this has come up before. Remember the tile saga? Well, the brick floors downstairs are dark reddish, and so is the beautiful, dark red mesquite we ended up with.

So we took the beautiful new blond table back apart again and drove it up to Santa Fe, and swapped it out for the craigslist table, which we brought down to Placitas. Admittedly, does look quite nice in John’s house, because it perfectly matches his new cabinets.

And, miracle of miracles, my new, rustic blond table fits (barely) in Santa Fe. Except, big problem – it didn’t come with chairs.

There were chairs in Jackalope that would have looked very nice with it, but they wanted nearly $200 each for them. Each. For a chair. One chair. Four chairs would have cost way more than the table! Here’s the chairs I didn’t buy:

I went back to craigslist. A young couple are moving to Portland and selling their New Mexico style, funky little square table and 4 chairs. I didn’t want their square table, but all of it combined was less than the cost of one chair at Jackalope. Sold. They even tossed it all into the back of their pickup and brought it to my house for me, while I followed behind them in my Mini Cooper. They didn’t even bother to tie the furniture down, and mid-trip one of them reached out through their window to lay down one of the chairs, which was threatening to escape (oh, to be 22 again).

The funky little chairs are perfect!

The small square table that came with the chairs is in my garage. And the California modern dining table (minus the extension leaf), and two of the six chairs, is currently stuck in the office in Placitas (yes, the office does still look like that). Anyone want a nearly new, modern style table with six chairs? We would like a desk in that office, so we can unpack!

Here’s a photo of our desk when it was in California. I still can’t believe these California photos. They make me sad. But, moving on…

I figure I can put the square table from the young couple in the office in Santa Fe. That will free up the desk, which we can then bring back to Placitas. Thus, the musical tables and chairs continues for another day.