Assembly Required

The first piece of furniture I purchased was a blue chair that I bought when I lived in a townhouse with two roommates when I was teaching in Annapolis. I called it a Lazy boy chair, but it wasn't actually from that manufacturer. That chair may be 25 years old, but it's still in great shape. The chair was a blessing to my brother because it reclined to the proper angle that he needed to be at when sleeping due to his sleep apnea. When Oliver reads to me, I sit on that chair with my feet propped up, and Oliver sits on my lap. We both love it! Right before I moved to Pennsylvania in June 1996, I purchased more furniture including a kitchen table set that included four chairs, a set of end tables and a coffee table (the particle board was stained to look like cherry wood), and a sofa/love seat set. I bought the furniture at a store called Best Buy Furniture. The love seat went to Chicago a few years later. We got one new couch in 2004 when we moved to Catawissa and our second couch in 2008 when we moved to our current home. My parents gave us a glider when I was pregnant with

Nadia. I bought one good quality bookshelf when I was living in my apartment (sometime between 1996-1999), and my parents bought Paul four more bookshelves when he completed his master's degree. I bought a bed, dressers, and nightstands for our first master bedroom in 2001, and we bought a dining room table and six chairs in 2004 as our first house didn't have a dining room but our second house did. Somewhere along the way we replaced our first (particle board) entertainment center for a better quality one.

Years ago I had conversations with my mother in which we would talk about which sibling might claim which piece of furniture within their home when my parents no longer had need of it. We'd discuss who might want the loveseat rocker, piano, grandfather clock, etc. My mom knew that the only piece of furniture I wanted was the kitchen table and chairs and the little rocking chair that had been mine when I was a child. She gave me that little rocking chair before she passed away.

I always loved her kitchen table set. In fact my first (very cheap) kitchen table was a similar color and similar style in that it had a pedestal instead of table legs. Over time the table became very dinged up in part because I didn't typically use tablecloths on the table. Also, once Oliver graduated from a high chair, we had a problem because we had five people in our family and only four chairs. We brought down a black office chair that Paul typically used. A few years ago I saw one of our neighbors post a picture of her kitchen table on Facebook that she was trying to sell because they had recently bought a new set. The one she was trying to sell had been a hand me down to her from one of her relatives. I was attracted to it because #1 it was partially dark green which is the color of our kitchen counter and #2 because it came with six chairs. I sold the one I had purchased in 1996 on Facebook for the same price I paid our neighbor for hers. The table was in better shape than the one I had just sold, and we go from four to six chairs, but we quickly discovered that the chairs I sold were much sturdier

than the ones I had just purchased. We've had this set a few years. Paul has made repairs to some of the chairs in the past, but last month two chairs broke. When my Dad moved to Virginia in 2017 he took the dining room table set with him but not the kitchen table. In 2018 he gave my sister the house in Maryland and all the furniture and other household belongings that he had left behind when he moved.

I had been looking online for over a year trying to find one as similar to that table as possible. My parents purchased much of their furniture at Ethan Allen, and I searched that store's website as well. The table had a protective surface (not exactly sure what is the proper term to use), and I was hoping to find a table with that same type of surface as it has caused the table to hold up beautifully over the decades. Maybe it was something that was common in the 1980's and isn't used these days or maybe I just didn't know how to properly search for that feature, but I couldn't find anything that matched what I was looking for. Last December

I had decided to try and buy a new kitchen table and chairs sometime in 2019, but then when I realized I wasn't going to be working this fall, I thought we'd better hold off on that purchase. My thinking changed recently because two of our chairs broke so we were down to four chairs again but need five about once a week when Paul eats with us, and we also need more chairs when the Towfighis share a meal with us. I had not yet spent my birthday money that I received in April, and Paul and I decided three weeks ago that now was the time to buy a new kitchen table and six chairs.

This set cost far more than the set I bought in 1996, but it cost less than half of what we paid for our dining room table and chairs in 2004. I'm hoping it will be the last kitchen table and chairs that I will ever buy. Our dining room table has held up very nicely, but I have been careful to use a pad and tablecloth. The pad certainly came to the rescue when water from the jacuzzi went through the chandelier and on to the table in October. In our move

here in 2008 somehow one of the pads (the one for the second leaf) didn't make it from our second house to our current house. I am planning on purchasing a pad for the kitchen table in the hopes it will help our table last longer and also a pad for that dining room table leaf so it will be easier to sit more people around that table when needed. At first I was going to try to sell our current kitchen table, but then I thought of moving it to the basement so the kids could put Legos on it down there if they wanted, and also then we could bring up chairs from that table when we had a lot of extra people sitting around our dining and kitchen tables. I can't think of any other furniture that we might need in the coming years so hopefully this will be our last furniture purchase for a very long time! What attracted me to the dining room table set in 2004 was how beautiful the table top was. I later realized this wasn't very smart because once you put a pad and tablecloth on it, the table top is never visible. If I could go back in time 15.5 years, I'd pick a dining room table set in which I really loved the appearance of the chairs, as that's what you actually see. I learned from that mistake, and although I still wanted an oval shaped oak colored table that had one center pedestal, I paid more attention to the appearance of the chairs than the table since the chairs not the table top will be visible. I do think the backs of the new kitchen chairs are pretty. I hope they are sturdy and hold up for the next 20-30 years.

The Legos that Nadia and Ian received on Christmas Day!

With all of our other purchases of good furniture, the furniture has been delivered and set up in our home. This time I made my purchase online instead of inside a furniture store as we've done in the past. Once I found the set that I wanted to purchase, I scoured the web to find the furniture store that had the best price. The one I finally chose offered the set for $200 less than the first website I had looked at after I used a coupon, and I was able to use PayPal, which means I'll get a 5% rebate eventually from my Visa card for that purchase. The furniture store I picked in Delaware offered free "curbside delivery." If we wanted it set up inside our home, it would have cost another $150. I thought I could carry in the furniture and save that fee. I didn't understand that they meant they would deliver the furniture in many, many pieces. Looking back on that first website that charged $200 more, I see they mentioned it included free assembly. It took me three hours to assemble six chairs, and it took Paul about two hours to assemble the table on Thursday evening. The delivery of the table and chairs also involved a boatload of cardboard. I cut it up so that it would fit in the trunk of the van and took it to a recycling center on Friday as the garbage company only takes our recycling on the third Tuesday of the month. When the delivery was made, one of our neighbors helped me carry the table top box into the kitchen. I could carry the other boxes, but that one was too heavy for me. She joked that I had my own 500 piece "Lego" set to assemble. I definitely don't enjoy assembling things as much as Ian does, but Paul said I did a good job with the chairs. I never consider myself to be very skilled with tools of any sort so I was pleased that I was successful in assembling the six chairs.

The reason I usually don't paint my fingernails is because the nail polish doesn't last very long. I usually paint my toenails in the summer, but the nail polish lasts MUCH longer on my toes. I had my first professional manicure in about ten years in June with Nadia (thanks to a gift certificate from my Dad and Margie), and I was impressed with how long my fingernail polish lasted that time. I painted my nails on Monday for the first time since June, and the polish definitely didn't hold up this week due to assembling toys on Tuesday (putting in batteries, helping with Legos, etc.) and assembling furniture on Thursday. I do like the color though so I think I'll give it another whirl tomorrow and hopefully it will last a bit longer the second time around.

I thought we'd be using both the kitchen and dining room table last night, but Yvonne, Joshua, and Wesley didn't come to Pennsylvania yesterday because Joshua woke up with a fever. Oliver also has had a fever yesterday and today. I'm hoping that the rest of the family members in our family and theirs don't catch the bug that Joshua and Oliver have right now. Paul didn't come home until around 8pm so he wasn't here when we ate dinner. I figured we could squeeze eleven people around the dining room table if we added the second leaf. The other times they've visited us recently we've had some people eat in the kitchen while others ate in the dining room. We did use three of the kitchen chairs in the dining room on Friday night. Two kids sat on the piano bench, and our dining room set includes six chairs. It's nice to be able to use either table whenever we need to now that the Legos have been relocated to Ian and Nadia's bedrooms. Ian received another Lego set yesterday from Aunt Yvonne. He had fun assembling it with Nathan and Joel. Most of the pictures in this post are from Christmas Day. Sadly I fell down on the job and failed to take any pictures yesterday during the seven hours seven members of my sister's family were here. Joe is definitely more of a night owl than me as they likely didn't get back to their home in Maryland until around 1:00am.