My new table and chairs arrived on Friday morning. To explain I bought them from a guy who buys written-off stock from companies such as Wayfair and The Range. He has a small warehouse which is an Aladdin's cave of all sorts of things. I saw the oak table advertised on Facebook Marketplace and it was just what I had been looking for, a round table that converts to oval. It was advertised at £40 (£299 in The Range) as it had a small bit of damage on the top (nothing that a bit of wood filler won't cure). It was still boxed and extremely heavy so the guy agreed to deliver it for me. I asked if he had any dining chairs and he showed me some grey upholstered chairs which oak legs that went with the table very nicely so I agreed to have 6 of them at £60 a pair.
When the guy came to deliver the table however he said that it had a bit more damage underneath that he hadn't noticed and therefore would not charge me anything for it! Mark and Michelle came round on Saturday to help put it all together and we decided that the table had probably been dropped at some stage as the brackets for the centre leaves were bent meaning that the centre section would not lie flat. Anyway Mark managed to remove the brackets, straighten them out with pliers and then refit fit them so the centre section now lies flat. Just a couple of very small chips that need some wood filler and then the whole table needs to be waxed to protect it. Not bad for nothing and a bit of TLC!
The chairs were perfect except that the wrong size bolts had been supplied for the front legs, they were too long and 'bottomed out' before they had tightened up. This was solved by a quick trip to B&Q to get some oversized nuts to act as spacers.
The table is just the same shade as the sideboard and the kitchen worktops and although grey is not my favourite colour the chairs go quite well with the wallpaper.