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The very phrase “folding dining room tables” conjures up images of ugly, vinyl-topped, moth-eaten, wobbly furniture designed to do nothing more than collapse and send your potato salad and Jell-O mold and fried chicken to ground below. Sure they’re necessary for the kiddies at Thanksgiving or the poker night in the basement, but that’s not all they can be used for. Folding dining room tables have lots of uses besides as eating tables, which is a good thing because nothing’s sadder than eating fried chicken and biscuits from under the table.
I should say, if you insist on using folding dining room tables to eat off of, they have come a long way in recent years. These days, folding dining room tables need not be a rickety, unsightly hunks of metal and plywood; they can be made of real sturdy materials with attractive finishes. They come in wicker, rattan, and hardwoods like maple and teak. They come round and even with drawers. Some of these folding dining room tables are so attractive, you may just want to use them year-round instead of the folding them up. When I come across the standard, plywood, folding dining room tables, my first thought is actually not of eating, but of making forts. Yup, I said forts. If you have kids, or have been a kid, how can you not want to flip that thing on its side and launch water balloons over it? Cheap folding dining room tables are great for this because they are meant to withstand abuse. If it’s plywood, you can use it as protection from paintballs without worrying how it will hold up, and if the table is vinyl topped, you’ve cleaned it after one water balloon fight. Of course, folding dining room tables can be made into less bellicose structures. If you leave the table standing up and throw a large table cloth or sheet over it, it makes a great hiding space for reading or coloring or whatever else it is that your privacy-minded child would like to do under there. I imagine, if need be, folding dining room tables could pass for pretty decent shelter in a storm. Folding dining room tables can also be used to keep pets in or out of a room or as goals for impromptu soccer or hockey games. Most commonly, I’ve used folding dining room tables as a work space. I often paint, saw, sand, glue and do other messy projects on them. Clean up is easy, or sometimes, I don’t clean it up at all. I use them when filling flower pots and for holding seedling trays. I use them at Christmas to wrap gifts on and hide gifts under, and I, of course, do puzzles and play other games on them. Come to think of it, I guess I rather like folding dining room tables. You can eat off yours if you want to; I’ll keep on playing with mine. |
Tables