I cant imagine anything more fun than coming home from work and discovering that your wife has removed the diningroom from the house. Well yeah, actually I can think of lots of things that are probably way more fun, and literally speaking I didnt actually REMOVE the diningroom from the house - it was more of a repurposing, really, and the diningroom is still actually attached. You see, we live in a really tiny house. I see all these posts and articles about tiny-home living and I wonder what the big deal is, because weve been doing it for years. Its all about creative use of space. So contrary to all common sense, our diningroom is dominated by this monster table that easily seats ten. Weve never had ten dinner guests in this house at one time in the history of ever, so this particular piece of furniture is pointless and space-sucking. Weve just been hauling it around with us since about our fifth year of marriage, for no real reason other than it was a bargain ($20), its slightly victorian/gothic (a style we both manage to appreciate), and its easier keeping it than trying to get it out of the house. I dont think were even really attached to it so much as its just always BEEN there. So this morning, after breaking my toe on one of its massive brass-footed legs for what is probably the nineteenth time this decade, I had an epiphany. Through my pain-filled haze I saw an empty diningroom, with the 2-year olds toys and the 8-year olds school desk the only obstacles in a blissfully open space. I had my screwdriver in hand before my toe stopped throbbing. Twenty minutes later, with the help of the 8-year old, the monster was vanquished. I took the digit-killing brass-tipped slope legs off and moved them to the front porch, where theyll probably sit for the next three years until the urge to light up a bonfire overtakes us, but at least theyre not in my diningroom anymore. I tipped the huge top surface up on its side and slid it over against the wall. And then I set about gutting the bathroom, because thats logically what one does when theyve just started a diningroom project. After transferring the beat-up antique desk that was being used as towel storage into the diningroom (be grateful that you didnt witness the one-woman inch-by-inch process), I repaired it with a few good kicks. Everything on it is dovetails and slots, very little hardware, so things slide back into place with a little well-placed force and a sprinkling of pent-up attitude. I may break it again just so I can work off that second cup of coffee and have my voice back down to a bearable pitch before The Husband gets home. Then I started putting the room back together. Ahh, space. I have space. It almost feels like a chapter of our life has just ended. That table is older than either of us - in fact it may be older than the two of us put together. Weve had it twice as long as weve had the kids. It has moved across the country with us and dominated two of our diningrooms, broken countless toes, and been Homeschool Central for the last three years. I dont know what its history was before it came to us in the back of a pickup truck after an exchange of twenty dollars, but I like to imagine that maybe it once sat in a diningroom that was worthy of its monstrous gothic victorian deco majesty. Maybe it hosted lavish dinner parties and seated ten, like it was meant to do. Maybe it was polished and cared for and decorated with floral arrangements and lace tablecloths and loaded with silver and china serving dishes, had wine spilled on it from crystal goblets, and kept small childrens secrets as they snuck food underneath it to the household pets. Maybe it reigned over the dining area in the downstairs servants kitchen of a posh mansion while maids and butlers gossiped about the upstairs residents over their dinner. Who knows where this old thing has been. And now its sitting in three pieces, two on my porch and one against the diningroom wall, awaiting its fate. I hate to think it ends here. Maybe one day well live in a bigger house that can better accommodate its bulk. Maybe well make something awesome but slightly smaller out of it and keep it in the family under a new purpose. Or maybe well sell it and let someone else build a history with it. All I know is that I love my new spacey room, even though I feel a little sad. And now were to the part where The Husband comes home and notices that the diningroom is gone and has been replaced with a homeschool classroom/playroom/wide open space. The next thing he notices is that hes got a freaking huge tabletop to haul outside. I dont really think any of it will surprise him...after 20+ years with me, hes come home to this scenario more than once. But the first time he stumbles through here in the dark of early morning and steps on a pile of Legos instead of bumping into the table and/or mangling a few toes on those vicious brass feet, hell thank me. Or not. Well see. At least now he has space to fall down and roll around in pain.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 21:50:29 +0000
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