The Holy Grail: Mid-Century Dining Set

Since we now had a dining room but didn't have a nice dining set, I started looking immediately after we closed on the house. Even though we wouldn't be moving in until fall, I knew it would take at least a few months to find 'the one.' For some reason the Portland area has an abundance of mid-century furniture, so we figured it was only a matter of time. I refreshed my Craigslist search a dozen times a day, because not only are these hard to find, when available they go incredibly fast. Of the few sets we saw and agreed upon, we were simply beat to it.

Four months went by and no luck, but not a big deal because we weren't living there anyway. But then we moved and had been in the house for over a month and still nothing, so I was getting discouraged. There hadn't been any good sets listed for quite some time. The dining tables and chairs in the local mid-century stores were really expensive, and we didn't really like any of the ones we saw anyway. 

We had incredibly specific requirements: medium to dark wood finish; small enough to fit comfortably in our space but includes at least one expansion leaf for when we have guests; at least six chairs, ideally padded and -- in case we didn't like the fabric -- relatively easy to re-upholster. Not to mention there were certain styles we just didn't like. 

So one Saturday afternoon near the end of October I happened to refresh my Craigslist search on a break from house projects and see a set just listed. I loved it, Nick loved it. So I emailed the seller immediately. Within the hour we pulled up in a friend's truck and were loading to take home. It literally happened that fast. Thanks to a couple downsizing, for under $600 we were the new owners of this beauty:

I'm happy we found this with some time to spare before our visit from Nick's parents and brother, which is happening tonight through this weekend. Though we will be eating out at some of Portland's best restaurants and a food cart or two, there will definitely be a few home-cooked meals and probably a game night or two around our new dining set. 

This one fit all of our criteria and more. For instance, I thought a rectangular table would fit best in the space, but Nick prefers oval. This hybrid shape was the perfect compromise: the ends are flat but the long sides are slightly rounded. Not shown above are the TWO leaves that were included, which expands the table to something like 8 feet. 

It also came with our ideal minimum number of chairs: six. The four we use most of the time are of this style:

And the final two are Captain's chairs, which we store in the garage unless needed for guests:

We also have two gorgeous Gunlock chairs in the living room that we can use to seat eight at the table. More than that and we'd just plan an outdoor dinner, since the set on the patio easily seats ten.

A detail we loved but hadn't seen before were the table legs: they start out square at the top then turn cylindrical and taper toward the floor. So cool.

Most accurate representation of the wood & color

Even the chairs have really great curves:

The seller was unsure if the fabric is original or not. It's pretty unlikely, since they are over forty years old.* I'd like to reupholster them, but that's not a priority project since the current bluish-gray fabric isn't awful. I could see having either black leather-like material for easy cleaning or an upholstery fabric in some cool modern geometric pattern or something. If it's easy enough, we could change the look entirely every few years.

*The manufacturing stamp on the underside of every piece is 1972, made by a company called Dillingham Manufacturing Co in Leland, Mississippi.