Feasting At The Table

The wait is over, the dining room table is all settled into its new home.  We got the ball rolling on this back in September after the arrival of our desk.  We were so enamored with the desk we knew we had to have something similar for the dining room.

On delivery morning Shep assumed monitoring position, priming herself to screech her head off at the truck that would dare pull up in front of her house.

Whereas my sweet simple Birdie just thought it was neat there wasn't a table in the room for a few hours, more space to play with her toys.

The deliveryman told me it he would get it as close to the front door as possible, but there was no way he could bring it inside because it weighs 400 pounds.  Ummmm.  So this sat outside for about 8 hours until we could get back-up.  

In fact the shipping crate is still sitting on our front patio and will be there until our next bulky trash pick-up which is still 2+ weeks away.  I'd say we're a favorite amongst the neighbors.

But anyway are you ready to see the table?

Here's where we were last time we visited the dining room...

And here she is. 

Isn't it stunning?

Made by Elpis & Wood it is a solid piece of walnut, 80 inches long, which explains why it weighs so much.

Elpis & Wood is based in Washington, and they are talented to say the least.

This table is a masterpiece, truly a work of art.

It is beauty in the purest form: it doesn't need any ornamentation, it's not gaudy or garish. It doesn't scream that you look at it, you just do, simply because it's impossible not to.

Just look at those natural curves, it feels so cool to run your hands along the edges.

It goes well the West Elm bar cart which is great since we bought that for the dining room after first moving in.

What it doesn't go so well with is the hand-me-down knotty pine buffet that we've had for years, but that's fine because we've never planned on keeping that piece in here anyway.  The search for a sideboard is in progress. 

As for the chairs, I'm really pleased with how they look around the table.  I didn't want anything with wood grain because I wanted there to be no competition with the table.  These add nice texture and the chair legs ended up matching the table legs perfectly.  

All six chairs fit around the table nicely, but since we eat almost all of our meals at this table it felt a little austere to have four empty chairs when it's just the two of us most of the time. I also like how those other two ground the wall over there, I think its ended up being a nice look. 

Elpis & Wood sent us the photo below while it was in production, they told us they could cut along the straight line which might be a little more functional or cut along the dotted lines for a more organic look. 

We talked about it a little, but it was a pretty easy decision to go with the dotted lines.  See how things like this curve would've been cut out if we chose the straighter edges?  Character upon character.  

This table embodies our mantra for the house which is "buy it right the first time" it's one of a kind, it's solid as can be {it's not MDF or veneer} and it's a work of art.  Not every piece of furniture we collect will check all of those boxes, but we'll try.

This means the house will fill up slowly, there will be lots of searching and waiting, quality isn't cheap. But I can play the waiting game.  What I can't do is go around dusting a bunch of stand-in dummies, I'd rather look at empty space and imagine what's to come.  It's usually worth it.

{More dining room posts here + here + here}