Red Plates and Tables and Stuff
Hello, Old Friends. I've been away for a while - knee deep in so many other projects.
Thought I would share something I did this weekend, just in case someone is facing the same dilemma I was having.
My son (bless his little smarty pants heart) complained last Christmas. He was "tried" of eating Christmas Eve dinner in the entryway. Hmmmm. That made my blood boil and I poo-pooed his complaints. "Don't come then," I thought to myself. But of course, that would never do, so I turned over possible solutions to the Where-Can-Everyone-Sit problem. We have between 15 and 20 people and I have a very small dining room.
So here's what I did:
I decided to eat out on the patio. Southern California can be pretty sunny on December 24 (think, "Rose Bowl), and even if it cools down after dark, we have a nice patio fireplace that throws out a tremendous amount of heat.
Now, I still had a problem. There's a good chance that the evening will be pretty cool and we would be needing a nice fire to warm everyone up. That being the case, I found it impossible to design a two-table configuration, as one table would end up being too close to the fire. I had to get everyone out on the patio and away from the fireplace.
Just a couple of months ago, we had a set of drop-down drapes installed on the two exposed sides of our patio overhang. I lowered the drapes and got all my white folding chairs from the shed. I arranged them in a slightly curvy line, making sure that the chairs weren't too close to the fireplace in case we'd have to light the fire.
The best part about this is, you can arrange the chairs in any way you want - slight curve, major curve, no curve, or, in my case, a curve closer to one end than the other. (Am I making sense????) It turned out that, despite what I imagined was a small space, I have 10 chairs on the outside curve and 8 chairs on the inside. And if need be, I can add a chair at either end.
Anyway, I got some butcher paper and made a template for the table top.
Next step was to call the lumber yard and order 4 X 4s and 2X4s cut to length, plus three sheets of 3/4 inch plywood.
My grandson and I made 6 legs. Six is probably over-kill, but my patio floor is quite uneven and I wanted LOTS of support.
Everything is screwed together, so it will all come apart later.
What you don't see are four utility shelf brackets (meant to support 10" shelves) mounted on the top of the legs.
The table top was cut and . . . . .
{{gwi:1455668}}
In addition to being able to configure the chairs any way you please, you will also note that this is sort of a "pedestal table" with no legs near the edges, so no one needs to straddle a table leg.
OK enough about that.
Here's the other things I wanted to say. Dollar Tree has solid red plates. Yep. $1.00 each. You order them online and have them sent to your local store (unless you're lucky enough to live near a store that has them in stock).
Almost as good as a garage sale find. I know you all have a couple of Christmas sets, but this turns out to be lucky for me, as I've never had so many people sitting at one table, so it was easy to use just a little of this dish pattern and a little of that dish pattern. Now, for $20, I can have all 20 people eating off the same colored plates.
Well, it's been good to talk to you again. Hope this wasn't too boring.
OA
jeannespines
kswl2
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