We Have a New Dining Room Table

For several years, we have been working on buying a new dining room table for our place here.  We have looked for something in various furniture stores but never found something that would fit our American tastes.  Most Egyptian sets have too much gilt and glitter for us.

We solved our initial problem when we moved in back in late 2008 with this handy unit and six plastic chairs.  The three purple ones make a nice matching set.  The red, white and black were the others available on that day.  Son, Terry, helped pack.


Later, we upgraded to a glass-top patio table with a plastic cover.


This year, we finally surrendered and decided to do what many friends have suggested, have a table custom-made.  "Just bring a picture of what you want.  Any furniture maker will make one just like it."  Linda handed over a nice picture of a table and some chairs in early February and we anxiously looked forward to the results.

The table and four chairs arrived on Sunday night about 7 p.m.  Of course, we hadn't specified that the table legs should be removable (aren't they always?) so soon discovered that it wouldn't fit in the elevator.  Next project: find a couple of trustworthy neighborhood men to hire to carry the table up eight flights of winding, mostly unlighted stairs.  Well, that's what Bawaabs are for and soon we had two workers.  I had already brought one of our flashlights down.  The furniture was all wrapped in plastic to protect it from road dirt but I have never seen a furniture pad here.  It would have helped.

We liked the overall appearance.  Here is the leg detail.  You can see that it's handcarved.  Next, Linda is using the flashlight and getting down to brass tacks as she checks for staining flaws.  Brass tacks?  I don't remember ordering any brass tacks!  You just can't take the Egyptian style out of an Egyptian table maker.  I suppose there is only one way to apply fabric to a dining room chair here.


The next night, the painter/touch-up artist was over to fix flaws.  He did a good job and we also had him fix the frame of a badly flawed antique mirror by our front door.

But, we said to our friend who was coordinating the whole operation, "we should have ordered a glass top for the table."  "No problem, measure please," he replied.  About an hour later, at 10 p.m., the phone rang.

"Are you still up?" he said.

"Yes."

"The glass will be there in thirty minutes," he informed us.

And it was.  Computer cut with a flat-polished edge.  Only in Egypt!