We often talk about updating our dining table. It’s not quite the right shape or proportion for the space it’s occupied for the past 10 years. When we bought it, we were living in a 1930s house; we had blown the back off and added one large pavilion-style extension. Then it moved with us to our first proper house, where it balanced a solid timber kitchen island. Now it sits within the curved brick wall of our almost triangular kitchen-dining-living room.  

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The table is 2.6 metres long and rectangular with steel legs and a solid maple top. It comfortably seats 10, although it has accommodated more at Christmas and for special celebrations. I can still remember the excitement of our table being delivered by its maker, Sam Haughton, prior to him launching his IMO furniture business. It replaced a lovely but too-small round table with tapered legs, which had been one of our first joint purchases.  

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There are just the two of us living here now – empty nesters – so the table is seldom filled to capacity. But it has a comforting familiarity. One end is pitted from where our now-adult daughter hammered the top with her fork as a toddler in a high chair, either protesting what she was being served or demanding more. We are curiously sentimentally attached to these imperfections. Ageing does that to you.

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If we updated it with something newer and more curated, the 10 vintage Thonet chairs that sit around it would probably look a little more tired than they do right now. The nearby leather sofa, which is almost as old as the table, would probably also appear more worn and in need of recovering. So we persist with our not-quite-right table, in our just-right house. Perhaps not everything has to be perfect.

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Guy Tarrant Architects

guytarrant.co.nz

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