Much to the relief of my patient hubby, I was finally able to settle on a vintage 1940s/ 1950s Formica table that fit the majority of my search criteria.  No more constant browsing craigslist multiple times a day for new listings or driving half way across the Southland on our weekends to check out tables.  I found a retro yellow Howell dinette set with four chrome & vinyl chairs, stamped on the under side of the table top with the manufacture date of April 13, 1949.  It is the perfect center piece for our small 1940’s kitchen.

I bought it from a family that was selling almost all the contents of their Venice Beach bungalow because they were relocating into a furnished home in Ireland.  Had they not been moving half way across the world, they would have probably kept it, along with the rest of their vintage furniture.  The sellers had bought the table second hand themselves more than 20 years earlier, and it had been used as their primary table in their cute yellow 1920’s kitchen ever since. Three of the four dinette chairs had tears in the vinyl seats.  I was bummed about that, especially when the owners said they got a quote last year to redo the chairs for $100 each, including materials. Ouch!  But the table had a pretty marigold yellow linen Formica top, and of course, linen is my favorite formica laminate pattern.  The majority of the tables I had seen elsewhere almost always had 1950’s Cracked Ice Formica, therefore I was still really tempted to buy this table, regardless of the chairs’ condition.

I gave it a through inspection before agreeing to buying it.  Other than the issues in the seat vinyl, the table laminate and chair frames were actually in amazingly good shape for its age.  The chrome on the legs looked like it would eventually clean up okay with steel wool, and didn’t have too much rust. All the parts were sturdy, but the metal table apron had faded and a few sections appeared to have pretty much worn off, probably from 70 years of scrubbing and cleaning up.  From the color on the underside, it was originally the same bright yellow color all over, but only the formica had not faded over the years.

After chatting with the sellers for about 15 minutes about our mutual love of charming old houses, vintage furniture, and world travel, they were kind enough to drop the price $50.  Yeah!  Despite the tears in the chairs, I was sold.  I am generally handy, and I was optimistic that I could probably recover the chairs, but if not, I could always find someone who could.  The hard part was getting it home. The family lived on one those Venice walk up houses, the kind that only has pedestrian access, and it was almost 1/8 of a mile back to my car, and then I had rush hour L.A. traffic to deal with.   Oh well, in retrospect, the table turned out worth it.

As I mentioned the frustration of searching for a nice vintage table, I really wanted a two toned color table or an inlaid design.  Since the paint on the apron had faded so much and rubbed off in other parts, it definitely needed to be repainted.  I decided this was one time it would be okay to be a bit creative to redo it in two different colors.  I spent an afternoon dismantling the table from the legs and polishing chrome, and masking off where necessary.  Then I used a specialty spray paint made for refinishing farm equipment to repaint the apron.  The table now compliments the burgundy red in the apple design of my mid century Franciscan Appleware dishes.  When I recovered the vinyl seats, I chose similar shades to the red paint and yellow linen formica.  I used a similar shade of dark red for the back rests and golden yellow Naugahyde for the seats cushions.  I have to admit, I am really, really pleased with how the vintage table turned out.  It fits the scale of our small kitchen much better than our old white tile top farm table ever did.  Hopefully we enjoy the table for many years to come, just like the family in Venice did.