How to Size a Breakfast Nook Table

There exists a long list of bedeviling problems outside the short attention span of our mainstream cultural gatekeepers who busy themselves with such frivolities as “how do we get to mars?” and “what’s Justin Bieber tweeting about?” Readers of this blog have more important concerns such as how to keep tomatoes alive or how to justify some ridiculously complex project such as liming your own corn for homemade masa or distilling your own essential oils whilst your household comrades complain about the tardiness of dinner.

Our long list of unsolvable problems at the Root Simple compound includes such things as bad posture, contaminated soils, middle age paunch and, of course, squirrels. But I can proudly say that we can cross one small dilemma off the list of east of Eden indignities: I can reveal the secret to how to size your breakfast nook table.

If you have an enclosed breakfast nook like we do, you should make your table three quarters the size of the bench. You should also put some sliders on the bottom of the table so that you can push the table back and forth to make it easier to get in and out of. This conclusion comes from 20 years of horrific breakfast nook sizing mistakes. Our first table was the same length of the bench. It was difficult to get in and out of and caused considerable complaints. Version 2.0 of the table was considerably shorter. So short, in fact, as to be useless.

A lightbulb went off in my head when I discovered this table in the 1925 Pacific Ready-Cut home catalog. Not only did it seem just the right proportion but it also had a interesting, if gimmicky, hinge to make it easy to slide side to side.

Having set up a new wood shop I set out to make a new table top and used a base that I found in an alley. Rather than that strange hinged mechanism I just used plastic sliders on the bottom of the table to make it easy to move the table back and forth. I chose hard maple and included breadboard ends for a traditional look. Flattening the table top was an excuse to learn how to use hand planes, the bicycle of tools in that they are simple, elegant and capable of saving the world (also like bicycles in that people seem to have weird hangups about them). Between the planing and the joinery, it was so much work that I wished that I had opened my wallet a bit more and chosen a more interesting wood at the lumberyard.

Now with the ease of moving into the breakfast nook I can sit, look out the window and contemplate a thousand more projects and the ever present riddle of the squirrel.

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  1. That’s a really nice looking table top! My boyfriend has collected (and used)wood planes for years. Fortunately they’re beautiful, since many of them sit in prominent places around the house – like mantels and bookshelves.

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