Out with the new, in with the old

When the sellers moved out of this home, they left behind some furniture (notably a huge dining table with chairs, and a kitchen island) as well as a lot of useful building materials in the barn. We made good use of the building materials in creating the pantry. At first we thought we’d keep the dining table and kitchen island they left behind; but now that we have some of the household items that was previously stored in the barn at our old place, we decided we’d rather have our own furniture instead.

The dining table is handmade and massive. It weighs — no exaggeration — on the order of 250 lbs. and is constructed of solid 2x6s.

This table is well suited to large families or medieval banquet halls. It’s nearly four feet wide and almost eight feet long.

Here’s the base with the top off.

Look how much room we now have, without that massive table and kitchen island!

This room in the foreground will become our library. The wall on the right is the pantry wall, and soon it will be covered wall-to-wall with bookshelves. The wall on the left, with the current bookshelves and birdcage, will be cleared to make room for the wood cookstove (when we get it installed). At that point, we will disassemble the current pellet stove (which we’ll also put up for sale) and put those two bookshelves where the pellet stove current is, and … and … and … well, as you may gather, we’ll be doing lots of rearranging in the next few months.

Meanwhile it was nice to see our old battered farmhouse table and chairs again. We pulled them onto the porch while we moved the other furniture out…

…and then put the table and chairs into the kitchen. Out with the new, in with the old.

And Mr. Darcy seems to like having that medieval banquet table out of the middle of the room as well.