The Recipe Chick: Refinishing my Craigslist table.

I've had a couple people ask where I've been, so I thought I'd pop on here with an update. My daughter wants to know why I am going to blog about Craigslist on my recipe blog, so I told her, you need to eat somewhere right? Recipes, cooking, eating, dining room table, it all fits here. :}

So here I am again with the apologies for neglecting this blog. My reasons are good ones tho, I promise. The summer is here and I've found that my apartment's air conditioner can't keep up with the heat of the day. We live on the top floor and the insulation here is terrible. So, at 4 PM it's 80 degrees in here and if I cook something it heats up even more. I thought living in a newly constructed complex we wouldn't have these problems, but I was wrong. Guess this place wasn't constructed properly.

Lucky for me we are moving in August. Tampa baby, can't wait! The new place will be shaded from the afternoon sun and the AC unit is larger so I won't have these problems. In the meantime, I have been making meals that require little or no cooking. Salads, sandwiches, meals from the freezer like pulled pork and meatballs in marinara I can just re-heat in the crockpot. I am also trying to clean out my pantry and freezer so there is less to move.

So where have I been since I haven't been in the kitchen? I have been lost in Craigslist Land. I will admit it, I am addicted to Craigslist. Since finding blogs where I have read what people are doing with Thrift store and Craigslist finds, I have become obsessed with finding my own treasures and breathing new life into them.

Last year when we moved from Pennsylvania, we wanted to travel as light as we could, figuring we would replace furniture when we moved here. Our large dining room table was the first to go. We had a table that seated 10-12 people that would never fit in our new place. We also had a little table that my daughters used in their bedroom that would seat 4. We figured leave the larger table, take the smaller, we'll get a new one later. Well, one year later and we still use that little 4 seater, and their are five of us living here. Hubby and I eat in the kitchen breakfast bar while the kids eat at the table.

Spending $1,000 for the dining room I want, just isn't in our budget right now. We also knew that we would be moving from where we are in a year so I wanted to wait and see what size dining room we would have at our new place. Now that I have found our new place, and I know the measurements of the room, I decided to hit Craigslist to find the perfect table.

I "lerve" a farmhouse table. I know I live in Florida, far away from the farm in PA, but my taste remains the same. I had to have a farmhouse table. I am not a fan of formal anything. I love furniture that invites you to sit down. A big chunky piece of wood that your family can beat up and it only adds character, that's what I am after.

To go with that table I also wanted windsor chairs. Anyone looking for dining room furniture knows that a good quality windsor chair will cost you well over $100 per chair. In fact, the cheapest I found was $130. Now I'm not talking about the cheaper quality chairs you buy at Walmart, I mean a good quality sturdy chair. After hitting Craigslist for a month, I thought I would never find what I was looking for. Maybe if I still lived in PA it would be easier to find a farmhouse table and windsor chairs, here in Florida not so much.

Everyday I pop on Craigslist to see what is up for sale. I check the three areas that are within 2 hours of my home. Finding windsor chairs of cheaper quality was easy, finding good quality chairs was next to impossible. Finally after three weeks I found someone selling her windsor chairs, and not only were they windsor chairs, but they were captain's at that. I quickly snatched them up, 4 chairs for $100, unbelievably great deal! I can't even buy 1 for that amount. I know I need 2 more, and I continue to look for them, if I can't find two more I will look for some ladderbacks I think.

So here they are, not exactly the color I wanted, but I can work with them:

Sorry for the dark picture, it's very overcast here. Now that I had the chairs, I needed a table to go with them. The hunt was on. The table was harder for me to find since I had a vision in my head of what I wanted:

This is sort of what I am going for, but I want the chairs to be one solid color and the table top to be a bit darker. Tables are easy to find on Craigslist. One that looks like a farmhouse table, with a leaf extension that can seat six, a bit harder here. It took me 2 weeks longer to find the table I wanted. But the wait was worth it, the table is exactly what I wanted and it was only $60!!!! The table definitely needed work but for $60.00 I'm willing to do it.

So here is the table I found:

What you can't see in the picture is the scratches and the red stain on the top, or the uneven colors in the finish. What you can see is the chairs. She was asking $100, but I wasn't digging the chairs and I already had my windsors, so she knocked it down to $60.00. Perfect size, comes with a leaf, looks like a farmhouse table, and it was $60.00!!!! My obsession paid off. I can't wait to get started.

Don't they look perfect together? I know it is to big for this space, but our new dining room is configured differently, and this table's new home will be on our patio until we refinish her and make her shine.