i'd like to motion a table
Jun. 8th, 2023 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishBack in September 2020 I was getting annoyed by my thrift-store dining room table. So I figured I'd solve the Table Problem once and for all.
In the event I bought two tables for way too much money. The first, a Transformer Table, showed up maybe a month later. It's plain and blocky, but it gets the job done: it came with a half-dozen (!) leaves and can expand to I think ten feet long. It also came with a coffee table / end table that doubles as leaf storage. It is well designed but not as well constructed as I'd like for the ridiculous amount of money I spent on it. Also my terrible movers banged it up a bit in transit.
It's served me well for coming on four years as my main table. I usually have one leaf in it to make it a square, and on Wednesday nights for RPG I add another so we can fit all five of us around it.
So, if the plan was to have the transformer table as my main table, what's with this other table?
Well. I couldn't decide, at the time. Fancy boardgaming tables had just started to become A Thing, and I still had dreams of being a fancy boardgamer. A table with removable leaves on top covering a thin-padded surface, one where you could just put the top back on it and leave the game set up, seemed like a neat thing. And a lot of them had attachments for the sides of the table, things like cupholders or game-piece-holders or writing surfaces. That would be really nice to have. But having an expandable table for larger games, or larger gatherings, would also be good.
Then I found a company that was making a fancy boardgaming table that could convert to a (square) coffee table. At which point my master plan settled in: use the fancy boardgaming table as a coffee table, unless I was having people over for games, and then just ("just") put the leg extensions back on. Brilliant.
There were two problems with this. The second was that this plan required substantially more space than I have in my current apartment. (It also required there not be a plague on that makes me less comfortable with hosting larger boardgaming get-togethers.)
The first problem was that the table wasn't shipping for another year at minimum.
But, whatever, it's not like I had people to come over for boardgaming while I was living in Fort. This was about planning for the kind of life I wanted to have at some point. So I ordered the transformer table, and put money down on the "Megan X" table from Geeknson. And as noted the transformer arrived in a reasonable timeframe, and my old table went to Erin where it is still in use as a Flat Surface Holding Things, a job at which it excels.
And I waited. And waited. And October 2021, the initial projected ship date, came and went. Tables slowly started trickling out to people in Europe (where the company's based), then in the USA.
In February 2022 I got a call from DHL saying they had a big package for me. This seemed promising. It ... was not. This was a large package containing ... all the cupholders and game-piece-holders and writing-surfaces and such miscellaneous accessories. Less useful without a table. I started a long email conversation with the people at Geeknson, and later with the people at DHL who had apparently lost the other boxes that should have gone with that one.
In the middle of this I moved back to the lower mainland. I am in retrospect glad I didn't have my expensive fancy gaming table, as there's a nonzero chance those assholes at 2 Burley Men would have broken it.
In late April I got another DHL delivery. This one included the legs for the table, the leaves for the top of the table, and a box to hold the leaves when they're not on the table. Notably missing: the actual table itself. Also one of the leaves had been sufficiently damaged in transit as to be unusable, and one of the legs had gotten dinged up.
So I went several more rounds with Geeknson and DHL, and eventually Geeknson wrote the table off as entirely lost and offered to make me a new one, and a replacement leg and leaf as well. This, they said, would take 5-6 months.
It finally shipped three weeks ago. There was further nonsense with trying to get the shipping company to deliver here instead of to my apartment in Fort, but long story short ("TOO LATE!") my tabletop arrived shortly before 7:30 this morning. I spent about an hour trying to attach the legs, which are really not designed to be at all easy to attach, particularly if you have short stubby Shackelford fingers like I do.
But: it's up, and it's very pretty.
Remember point 2 above, though? Honestly this table is a bit big for the space it's in; the transformer in square shape is about six inches shorter on each side. And now I have two tables, in a 500sqft apartment.
Luckily the transformer collapses down to side-table-sized when it has zero leaves in it, and I do have a space under the bar for it to hang out and be mostly unobtrusive. Still a bit silly to have two tables, but whaddaya gonna do. (I could put it in my storage unit but I would have to rearrange a great many things in the storage unit, and it fits alright here.) All the miscellaneous accessories fit in the well under the table leaves, which is great until I want to use my nice gaming table; I'll need to get a box to put them in, and find a place for them.
But at least I have my table. And a reminder that life usually doesn't look like what I expect it will three years later.
(Hoping to have Rainbow House over for a test run this weekend.)
In the event I bought two tables for way too much money. The first, a Transformer Table, showed up maybe a month later. It's plain and blocky, but it gets the job done: it came with a half-dozen (!) leaves and can expand to I think ten feet long. It also came with a coffee table / end table that doubles as leaf storage. It is well designed but not as well constructed as I'd like for the ridiculous amount of money I spent on it. Also my terrible movers banged it up a bit in transit.
It's served me well for coming on four years as my main table. I usually have one leaf in it to make it a square, and on Wednesday nights for RPG I add another so we can fit all five of us around it.
So, if the plan was to have the transformer table as my main table, what's with this other table?
Well. I couldn't decide, at the time. Fancy boardgaming tables had just started to become A Thing, and I still had dreams of being a fancy boardgamer. A table with removable leaves on top covering a thin-padded surface, one where you could just put the top back on it and leave the game set up, seemed like a neat thing. And a lot of them had attachments for the sides of the table, things like cupholders or game-piece-holders or writing surfaces. That would be really nice to have. But having an expandable table for larger games, or larger gatherings, would also be good.
Then I found a company that was making a fancy boardgaming table that could convert to a (square) coffee table. At which point my master plan settled in: use the fancy boardgaming table as a coffee table, unless I was having people over for games, and then just ("just") put the leg extensions back on. Brilliant.
There were two problems with this. The second was that this plan required substantially more space than I have in my current apartment. (It also required there not be a plague on that makes me less comfortable with hosting larger boardgaming get-togethers.)
The first problem was that the table wasn't shipping for another year at minimum.
But, whatever, it's not like I had people to come over for boardgaming while I was living in Fort. This was about planning for the kind of life I wanted to have at some point. So I ordered the transformer table, and put money down on the "Megan X" table from Geeknson. And as noted the transformer arrived in a reasonable timeframe, and my old table went to Erin where it is still in use as a Flat Surface Holding Things, a job at which it excels.
And I waited. And waited. And October 2021, the initial projected ship date, came and went. Tables slowly started trickling out to people in Europe (where the company's based), then in the USA.
In February 2022 I got a call from DHL saying they had a big package for me. This seemed promising. It ... was not. This was a large package containing ... all the cupholders and game-piece-holders and writing-surfaces and such miscellaneous accessories. Less useful without a table. I started a long email conversation with the people at Geeknson, and later with the people at DHL who had apparently lost the other boxes that should have gone with that one.
In the middle of this I moved back to the lower mainland. I am in retrospect glad I didn't have my expensive fancy gaming table, as there's a nonzero chance those assholes at 2 Burley Men would have broken it.
In late April I got another DHL delivery. This one included the legs for the table, the leaves for the top of the table, and a box to hold the leaves when they're not on the table. Notably missing: the actual table itself. Also one of the leaves had been sufficiently damaged in transit as to be unusable, and one of the legs had gotten dinged up.
So I went several more rounds with Geeknson and DHL, and eventually Geeknson wrote the table off as entirely lost and offered to make me a new one, and a replacement leg and leaf as well. This, they said, would take 5-6 months.
It finally shipped three weeks ago. There was further nonsense with trying to get the shipping company to deliver here instead of to my apartment in Fort, but long story short ("TOO LATE!") my tabletop arrived shortly before 7:30 this morning. I spent about an hour trying to attach the legs, which are really not designed to be at all easy to attach, particularly if you have short stubby Shackelford fingers like I do.
But: it's up, and it's very pretty.
Remember point 2 above, though? Honestly this table is a bit big for the space it's in; the transformer in square shape is about six inches shorter on each side. And now I have two tables, in a 500sqft apartment.
Luckily the transformer collapses down to side-table-sized when it has zero leaves in it, and I do have a space under the bar for it to hang out and be mostly unobtrusive. Still a bit silly to have two tables, but whaddaya gonna do. (I could put it in my storage unit but I would have to rearrange a great many things in the storage unit, and it fits alright here.) All the miscellaneous accessories fit in the well under the table leaves, which is great until I want to use my nice gaming table; I'll need to get a box to put them in, and find a place for them.
But at least I have my table. And a reminder that life usually doesn't look like what I expect it will three years later.
(Hoping to have Rainbow House over for a test run this weekend.)