Buying a Table and Chair Set for the First Time

I've been an adult for 12 years already, and married nearly that long, and I have to say that even with all that, I've only really felt like I've become a "real" adult for the last year and a half, since we've moved into our own home. It honestly is less the fact that we own the place, and more what we did with it; each milestone in it, especially buying something "new" made me feel more and more like a "real adult".
When we bought our first couch set when we moved into this new home, it made it turn into a "real" home and not an makeshift home, made it a home I felt proud to share. Roughly the same time we also bought a new washing machine, dryer, and refrigerator. For the first time ever we had brand new things, and not stuff bought second hand or salvaged from the trash. And it started to make me feel even a bit like an impostor. Because how could I, the frugal lady, the one who is known for doing things super cheaply, actually have new and nice things? The fact that we bought them cheaply, even if new, meant that I wasn't compromising my values, but it still was something hard to wrap my mind around and feel comfortable with.

But even with our nice new house, and our new appliances and so much in our house that we were proud of, our dining area left much to be desired.
When we first got married, we got a nice sized solid wood 8 seater table for free. It had no leaves, but it was more than large enough for us. When we moved to our smaller home, our landlords offered us a free table that looked similar to the one we had, only this was an 8 seater when closed, but had 2 leaves so could open to seat 12. It was also narrower than our old table, so perfect for our small apartment. It was no brainer, so we gave away our old table, and since then had the hand me down from our landlord. Over the years, the table started showing signs of wear and tear, and my handy husband fixed it as best as he could, but it still had issues. Although he fixed the table legs that were shaky, suddenly when we moved the table we had to be sure that the leg actually moved with the table or the entire table would collapse. The latches to keep the table together and closed when there were no leaves also broke. Essentially it got to be a real pain to have the table.


Over the years we've had many chairs in our apartment. We bought a set of 4 second hand from someone, and then a hodge podge of other chairs rescued from the trash, etc...  We even bought some second hand Ikea chairs, but they were so terrible that we never ended up using them. We reupholstered our set of 4 chairs a few times. We fixed chairs that were broken, strengthening them, including the hodgepodge mismatched collection. Then in our new apartment, to make them all a uniform look, more or less, we painted all the chairs black, and reupholstered them all in burnt orange suede, and then covered the seats in plastic. We also trash picked a set of 4 black matching chairs with grey pleather seats.
And those chairs were good for a while.
But we live in a home with kids.
And kids make trouble.
Kids made it their effort to literally scratch off every bit of black paint they could from the chairs. Additionally the paint came off onto the walls, leaving a nice black mark there. Then there were the kids that literally ripped the plastic covering from the seats, and that ripped the suede covering as well.
On top of that, because the chairs were old, we started having similar issues to that which we had with the table. They were rickety, wobbly, etc... Mike did his best to fix them, but the fixes were only temporary. There also ended up being screws that poked out where they shouldn't; a guest even got cut one time by our chairs.

That's when we decided enough was enough. We'd buy a table and chairs.

We had been looking for years, honestly, but everything was so above our budget and not what we wanted. After our experience with those second hand Ikea chairs, I didn't want Ikea chairs, and everything else we saw was so prohibitively expensive. The cheapest chairs we saw anywhere were folding chairs, and that was at about 50 dollars a piece, and I didn't want folding chairs as our regular chairs. Non folding chairs were significantly more expensive. Being as we were a family of six and have guests, we needed a sizable amount of chairs, and I didn't see how it would be possible. Tables were $600 at the very least, and they didn't have the qualities I want, namely, to be able to close small and open large to have guests.

And then one day Mike was browsing the internet, on the same site where we purchased our couches cheaply that we've been very happy with, and he found a table that was really perfect for our needs and much better than our previous tables. When it was small it seats 8, and then it opens up to 3 meters, or nearly 10 feet long, with the addition of three extra large leaves, so it can fit a total of 14 or 16 people around it!

This is really amazing for me, because I love to have guests, and this is perfect for hosting, and then it shrinks back to a more normal size.

Best part about it? This table was $425 including delivery and putting it together.
The only downside? It didn't exactly match our color scheme of grey, burnt orange, and turquoise. It was a dark pine color, which we said was close enough to the pallet wood furniture my husband built, and anyhow, we cover the table with a tablecloth all the time, so it's no big deal.

While Mike was on the site, he found these chairs that worked out to be $30 per chair. We bought ten of them, so that we can have matching even when we have guests. These chairs are grey, which is perfect for our color scheme, and covered in fake leather, which is terrific for kids, because they wipe down very easily.

These chairs cost an extra $5 each to put them together, but my husband and I knew we were handy enough to do it ourselves, so we saved the $50 and put them together relatively quickly, even if the first one took a few tries until we figured out the instructions, and then the rest was smooth sailing.

Since we're keeping our table closed, we're keeping only 8 of the chairs around the table, and the other two chairs are in other rooms in our house, in use next to desks.

Lastly, from the same site we bought six folding chairs for a total of 99 dollars, or $16.50 per chair. We'd intended to buy them grey with grey leather seats, but unfortunately they were out of grey, so we bought them in black.

And for the first time in forever, my dining room looks respectable, with matching chairs that coordinate with the rest of the colors in my house, with a beautiful table. Add to that our brand new dishes and I really feel ready to welcome guests into our home.

I love that we were able to get things we really liked all within a very reasonable budget. Even second hand would likely have cost us just as much once we factored in delivery, and because these items are new, hopefully they will last us a long time.
And finally, I feel like I'm a real adult, with a real adult home!

In your home, do you have a matching set of tables and chairs? Were they purchased new or second hand? At what point in your adult life did you get a matching set of chairs and/or table? Or is that something that isn't a priority for you at this stage in your life?
What types of things make you feel finally like a "real adult"?