I traded my old kitchen table that sat 4 with someone who needed to downsize to the identical table from 6. It is in great physical condition, but needs some love in a cosmetic sense. Currently, it has a white base and oak top ( lots of stains and scratches). I have seen the same table at several stores with its base painted red or black and it looked really nice. Could someone suggest a paint to use when repainting the base? Also, for the oak top, should I restain or paint?

June, I just did a search for 'Canadel' on ebay and found a kitchen table, six chairs and a hutch with an asking price of $ 1,300.00. You can see it here: http://cgi.ebay.com/Canadel-Kitchen-Dining-RoomTable-Chairs-Hutch_W0QQitemZ320173535846QQihZ011QQcategoryZ20484QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p1638.m118 If the listing is gone by the time you read this, here is the description: Here is a Oak Two Tone green and natural color Canadel dining or kitchen table with leaf, 6 chairs two are captain style with arm rests with table leaf it is about 6.5'L X 38"W without leaf it is about 5' L X 38" W and a matching hutch in very good condition no scratches 52" L X 17.5" W X 33 3/4" H... This has plenity of storage space for this special occasion plates, platters or china. No scratches on table well protected under table cloth. Two chairs has some scratches on the front back of section of the chair and on the front lower part of legs (it could be touched up) from everyday use. Over all shape of the set is in nice well kept condition.... Paid over 2100.00 just for the table set not including the hutch price.... Feel free to ask any questions.. Thanks for looking.. Local Pick up only...

This topic stressed me out a bit since we are the middle of work opening our kitchen to the dining room in our 1906 house. I'm already worried about whether everything will turn out ok. We thought a lot about this, though, so I'll weigh in. I apologize for the length - brevity may be the soul of wit, but it apparently is not my strong suit. We moved to our current 1906 Arts & Crafts house from a Victorian farmhouse which had the kitchen isolated from the dining room and living room, separated by a bathroom. We found it hard when we had people over since they were either crammed in the kitchen without enough room to participate in the cooking or they were way at the other end of the house. We saw that we had a pattern of having people over in the summer when we could congregate outside by the grill, but not much in the winter. We have a very close community of friends and we enjoy sharing meals in a very casual, family sort of way with kids playing, adults talking and cooking. We also found the dining room more difficult to use for everyday meals. Additionally, it was not possible to carry on conversations when in the two spaces or moving between them for setting, clearing etc. I enjoy cooking, but also like interacting rather than being isolated. When we decided to move we were looking to resolve this split and have a more connected common space. We saw many houses (and almost bought one) with family room additions connected to the kitchen which left unused living and dining rooms. These rooms had become merely somewhere to walk through, heat and cool. Some had little or no furniture in the abandoned formal rooms. We realized that we did not really need this redundant space. There is an excellent book by Sarah Susanka (Taunton Press), The Not So Big House. It talks quite eloquently about using space in an efficient manner. I personally like having one place to eat all meals. I like eating at the dining room table for just the reasons mentioned in posts above - slowing down, sitting on a chair instead of stools, in a space designed for eating, around a table (preferably round) which facilitates a relaxed, shared experience. The truth is that since we do not have servants, we often need to go back and forth between the spaces. Houses at the turn of the last century were often built to fit a more formal way of living which placed servants (even modest homes) or the women of the house out of the way while the hosts entertained in formal rooms. They were also built prior to the use of refrigerators. When we moved into this new-to-us 1906 house it had a (tiny) butler's pantry for staging serving, while the refrigerator was crammed into the food pantry in such a way that required near-contortionist moves to get a carton of milk. The only storage was open to mice or around the corner in the butler's pantry cabinet. Counter space was limited to the two drainboards of the 1950's metal sink. This was not the room of efficient post-work cooking and cleaning, much less any pleasant shared time. One of us would quite frequently get trapped in the pantry by another trying to get something. The rest of the first floor of our beloved home showed signs of the revolutionary changes that were happening in houses at the time, shifting from formal double parlors to more flowing open rooms with wide framed openings between them. I am in Oak Park, home to Frank Lloyd Wright, though our home was part of a far more modest working class development. It is stunning to see the differences among the different houses being built during the first part of the century. As central heating and radiators allowed rooms to open up, a social shift away from formality and toward more relaxed, real connection was also under way. Now that the social and technological changes that have transpired over the last century have ushered in a time of shared cooking, I welcome kitchens and floorplans that facilitate that. There are other times in history and other cultures today in which the communal kitchen holds a significant place in a community. Our new kitchen provides inward facing space where people can prep around an island. In our open floor plan I envision friends and family cooking and talking together, either within the de-cramped kitchen or between it and the dining room next to it. We are also concerned about creating something that respects the house's history, fits in with the architecture and creates a sense of two spaces with different but related activities. The disfunctional pantries were ommitted in favor of refrigeration and dish storage near the new dishwasher (uses less water than hand washing). We removed the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and are replacing a portion of it with shallow (12 inch)cabinets that create a partial division and open to both sides. There will be a 6 foot visual opening on top,stepping in to a 3 foot walking space at the bottom in a sort of key hole shape. As much as we love the big pocket door in the large opening between the dining room and the foyer, I doubt that we will use it. I just can't see part of our family sitting in the living room smoking cigars while another part of the family or servants quietly set the table out of sight. It has been a delicate dance trying to mesh the eras. We are having a duplicate of the missing original built-in hutch along one side of the dining room built, but it will have some wood doors in place of the original glass to house some less aesthetic items that have no other storage on the first floor since the one closet was turned into a WC in the 50's. We got a picture of the original at an open house across the street and noticed gloves and scarves displayed where china and silver of another time once shone. Life is not static and it seems to me that a key component to navigating the ever-shifting impermanence is to be flexible. I cross my fingers hoping that my ideas about homes and people actually work out in this re-working of our lovely old house. I do not disagree with any of the prior posts, I just wanted to add some thoughts.

Can somebody hand me a towel? I'm drooling puddles on the tabletop here. This house is a-freakin-mazing. Unpainted original woodwork? Original light fixtures in storage? Intact built-ins? Be still my beating heart! Where I live, in its current condition that sucker would be priced at a quarter mil. Fully restored? Half a mil easy and probably three-quarters if in a desirable location. Without being able to see more of the exterior structure I'm not sure I could label it as a certain subtype of bungalow (and it's quite big for a bungalow, too) but I wouldn't tag it as a Tudor by a longshot... there are so many different influences that my instinct is simply to call it "Arts & Crafts" and leave it at that. (I'd have no problems with a haunted house, either. I get on well with ghosts - have had one before - and hang about with a passel of psychics and clergy of various flavors anyway.) That bathroom with the green plaid wallpaper above the tile is just begginging for a Bradbury, Trustworth, or Carole Mead frieze. Mmmm... (Did you know that Vandykes.com has vintage-style medicine cabinet kits that will coordinate nicely with that style of woodwork?) Re: the servants' bathroom, is that painted tile or scored plaster? If you decide to pull out that mini tub, either keep it with the house (goodness knows you have enough basement space to store it) or sell it, don't just pitch it - those are VERY hard to find! I'm guessing that's a 4-footer or perhaps even a 3 1/2 foot? A new 48" cast iron clawfoot runs about $1300 plus freight. 42" ones are almost impossible to find. The three sinks in the basement are very interesting, considering that a family of that economic stature would have been able to afford a gas or electric washing machine (and would have been mighty proud of it too!). I wonder if someone had a hobby that required multiple sinks - is there evidence that the spot it's in was ever used as a darkroom, perhaps? It looks like probably only the center set of taps is original. If I were physically able, I would grab a house like this in a split second. It is absolutely one of the loveliest houses I have seen for a long time, the "bones" are impressive and comparatively little has been done to screw it up! (There is little as pathetic as a thwarted old-house nut, except maybe a dogless dog person.) As for the mortgage, what about a FHA 203(k) rehabilitation loan?