Life Around the Table

For many years we have been seeing some families fall apart and standards slip. Teenagers show no respect and communication with parent’s breakdowns. Everyone prefers to watch their favourite programme around the television, with dinner on their lap. I have heard of kids talking to each other via text whilst sitting next to each other, because it is cooler than talking. Social interaction needs to be reintroduced.

The dining table or kitchen table can help to restore some of the social skills being lost within families these days. Most families can find time sit around the table at least once a day for a meal, and catch up with each other. Turn the television off, and talk to one another on a daily basis and connect. It has become far too easy to sit with your meal on your lap, watching the soaps, but is it at the cost of family breakdown?

Widen the family circle on a Sunday and invite grand parents around for lunch. Enjoy a roast dinner, glass of wine and a good catch up with each other. These occasions do not have to be saved just for Christmas. It may seem a bit dated, but it works.

Once you have purchased a quality dining table to be proud of, before you know it, you will be inviting friends around for evening meals on a regular basis. They, in turn, will invite you back. Soon you will be meeting new people and, before you know it, the number of friends you have will expand. It is great for social and business networking.

So, find some room at home for a dining table. If your kitchen or dining room is too small for a permanent one then think about an extending table, or even a fold away table, that can opened up on a daily basis.

Different Types of Wooden Tables

Refectory

Traditionally, long narrow trestle-type tables, with fixed tops, so called after the monks’ refectory or dining-room in the Middle Ages.

Extending/Draw Leaf

A table which incorporates some form of lengthening the top for additional sitters. The oldest type is the Draw Leaf extension table, dating from the fifteenth century, which is still made today!

Drop Leaf

The side leaves hang vertically in the closed position and are support by brackets, sliders or, in the case of the Gate-Leg table, by a hinged leg or leg frame.

Pedestal

These tables are normally circular or D-end and are supported by a central podium or pillar terminating in three (tripod) or four legs. The top of round, or circular, tables cannot be too large to ensure that it will remain rigid on the pillar support.