My Old Kentucky Farm Table

It’s so hard to drive past a garage sale sign, can I get an Amen? Last Saturday, on my way home from an appointment, I passed by 2 in a neighborhood near my house. Despite my best intentions of hurrying back home, I couldn’t keep from doing a quick drive-by of them both.

Garage sale #1 was a bust, but here is what I found at Garage sale #2,

It’s an awesome, solid wood, real-life farm table complete with 8 chairs! The wife of the couple who was selling it said her father made the table when she was little.

She was one of 11 children, and so as the family grew, her dad built two extra leaves to put in the table so the whole family could fit around it. It sits on original casters, and the extra legs you see in the middle screw into the bottom middle of the table when the leaves are in.

The chairs are tagged as from “Murphy’s, Owensboro, KY,” which from the best I can tell, was an old furniture company that moved around 1920 from Detroit to Kentucky. They are all well-built, and sturdy, just in need of a little TLC.

It was getting about lunch time, and the couple hadn’t been able to sell the set at their asking price and were very willing to entertain offers.

I made an offer of about 60% of their asking price, and they happily accepted. They were very friendly and were glad that it was going to someone who would restore and appreciate it.

It does need some love. The leaves are just made from plywood, and I’m not sure they can be salvaged. The table top is quite worn, which is understandable given the action that it saw from that family of 13!

My plan is to refinish the table top and see what I can do to clean up the legs. I would love to leave the legs unpainted, so the table can retain that real, true, farmhouse style.

The chairs I see going a light, blue/gray color, much like this in this picture,

via Pinterest

As with most of my finds, I’m pretty tempted to keep it. I’m not in love with my current kitchen table; it also needs a facelift, and I’m short a few chairs. This table is a better shape than my current one, and would fit my space better. Even without the leaves, it can seat 6 comfortably, while mine is really more of a roomy 4-seater. It’s really a perfect size for a breakfast area. We’ll see what happens when I’m finished with it . . . if I’m able to let it go.

So moral of the story is, always take the extra few minutes to drive by a garage sale when you see a sign. You never know what treasure you may uncover!