New Table, Chairs, Paint, Drapery, etc

It all started earlier this year. One of our family birthday dinners took place at a fun restaurant in the Florida panhandle -- McGuires Irish Pub. We loved the food, the dollar bills on the ceiling, the atmosphere, Justin's ice cream sundae hamburger, but most of all the fact that all 12 of us were at a huge round table. No one was stuck at an end and the conversation flowed much better.

That started us on the quest to replace our 8' x 4' glass dining room table. Ever try to find a huge round table? It's almost impossible and when one is found, the price/shipping is as much as our first house. After searching for several months online, it occurred to us to try a local store Hemispheres. I didn't have much hope, but there it was. The perfect table sitting right by the front door and apparently had just come in, if we had gone there even two weeks earlier, we wouldn't have seen it.

The 7' round table breaks down to a 54" table without leaves, but it's so hard to add the leaves, it will always stay at the larger size.

Getting back to the story, now we have the perfect table and the "old" chairs are too short. The style was okay, but sitting on a chair felt like being in a highchair. the table came almost to mid-chest. So . . . . now we need some chairs. Again much searching online and locally, when we found the almost perfect chair for us. (Would have rather had a slightly different color, but this works). We ordered them from Home Decorators.com with local pickup. Uh, the store is the other side of the city and it took two trips to get them into the pick up truck. On the second trip to the store, it was finally realized that the company "shorted" us two chairs, so it was another week's wait and another trip across the city when they came in.

Now we have the perfect table and almost perfect chairs.

We've never had draperies in the "old dining room", just dark wooden blinds that looked fine. No more. So it's time for draperies -- the only ones I like, without going custom, are ready-made but about six inches too short. So I buy an extra panel and add fabric. Looks good!

Turning on the light, the chandelier looks pretty darn tacky with the table and chairs. So we go looking some more, go to numerous local lighting stores, lots of online searching. We finally decide on a chandelier and get the quote from a local store. Ouch. Well, it's what we want so, we'll bite the bullet. But when searching online, I find the same chandelier at LightingDirect at almost 40% less, PLUS no shipping and no sales tax. Wow. I call up to find out if it's in stock (it wasn't at the local store). The chandelier is not only in stock, but since we are getting another lighting fixture, we get an additional 10% off! The chandelier is ordered and comes in less than a week.

But that's another whole story. The trucking company calls and tells me they are outside of our subdivision on a main road, but the truck is too big to come into the area. They will take out the electrical wires if they drive in. Not a good thing. So, I grab our dolly and meet him at the entrance and bring the smaller piece into the house, while he puts a huge (almost refrigerator size) box on his dolly and follows me in. Both boxes are now in the foyer, make that "they are" the foyer and then some.

What's next? In the dining room -- NOTHING! But now the nearby kitchen needs a little more help.