Two tables end to end to seat ten people.
When we bought our first house in France it was a tiny place but perfect as a second home or "holiday home". We struggled to find furniture for it in France and soon realised that we could end up spending much of our actual holidays trying to furnish it.
Over our first winter of owning the little house we collected furniture for it in the UK, sofas from Ikea, flatpack bedroom furniture and a lovely oak dining set in the January sales including a four seat table that would extend to six. We hired a van and transported the lot across the channel at Easter 2008, picking up extra beds for the second bedroom and cramming them into the van on the way through France.
After a few years we downsized in the UK in order to upsize in France. The new UK house was much smaller and very little of our existing furniture would physically fit into it so we brought it all to France. This included our dining table, sideboard and four chairs, meaning that we now have two dining sets in France.
"Casual dining" in the kitchen.
The old UK table works well in the kitchen where Nick refers to it as "casual dining" and the oak set from the little house lives in the dining end of our living room where it serves as "formal dining" and comfortably seats six. It’s a solution that has worked well for years and we really like it.
As our circle of friends has grown we have been entertained by people who have the ability to throw large dinner parties or lunches where they could seat eight, ten or even more people. We're not talking posh château dining, but people who have the room to fit in a big old table, or multiple small tables, and a random collection of chairs.
After a while I began to wonder if we could do larger gatherings ourselves. Our dining table seats six comfortably and we found that by putting the kitchen table at the end of it we could seat ten. The only problem was that to get the kitchen table into the dining room we had to heave it out of the house through the kitchen door and back in through the middle door as it would not physically fit through the door between the two rooms!
It was heavy work, adding a lot of time to the hosting of any dinner party and in fact we missed having the kitchen table into the kitchen for food prep so we had to come up with another solution.
One extension to seat an extra two people.
When we bought this house the large bedroom was also being used as an office. There was a desk made from a couple of lengths of fairly sturdy kitchen worktop which we saved when we dismantled the office. Having a huge barn enables us to save a mountain of stuff that might come in handy later!
Two extensions to seat an extra four people.
Nick created two extensions, one for each end of our oak table, using sections of the old office worktop, each supported by three tubular legs from Ikea. They fit onto the table using clamps which can't be seen when the extensions are not in use. With one extension the table seats eight with ample elbow room. With two extensions we can seat ten. If only the room itself was bigger we could add a third and seat another two!
The worktop is not pretty and obviously I need a long tablecloth to hide all the joins but it works really well. Luckily we already had enough chairs!
Sets of matching or at least reasonably similar dinnerware are often on sale at local brocantes or vide greniers and we have accumulated a fair stash of it over the years. The original set of six plates we bought from Ikea in 2008 has been boosted by acquiring extras from brocantes and fortunately we also have plenty of room in the barn to store it all! We rarely pay more than two or three euros for a set of plates, bowls or whatever, the bonus being that we now have enough to afford to break a few! Luckily mismatched crockery and glassware are still very much "in vogue".
The table in the foreground (there is a step down into the "dining room") is a side table that normally lives at the far end of the room and we bring it forward when we have a big dinner party. It's perfect for serving dishes and plates. It was a UK charity shop purchase a few years ago (pre Brexit when it we could bring such things freely). I remember thinking it would probably come in handy at some point and with a coat of paint and a lick of varnish it's just the job!
