So in case you weren’t aware, my husband and I like to play poker. Ok, fine. We are obsessed with poker. How much? So much so that we bought an official poker table with our last name printed on the felt. Yep.
We actually put a lot of thought into this before we bought it. It was our first official piece of furniture we bought for our first new home in South Florida. Priorities, y’all. In fact…we actually searched for homes with the requirement that the home MUST have a “poker room” large enough for the 10 seater beast. There were several homes that got nixed only because it didn’t meet our poker needs. We also knew said room was going to double as a formal dining room in the future. Which is pretty awesome in my opinion because formal dining rooms are so rarely used in the first place.
So we searched for custom poker tables online and actually found a guy who made them by hand completely customizable right there in Coral Springs where we lived. Awesome? Yes. He let us pick the type of wood, style of legs, number of cup holders, felt colors, etc. etc. The best part? We paid for it all with poker winnings. So here it is after we got it delivered and the chairs set up. (The chairs were a home goods find for $79 each)
And here are some pictures from it’s first official use.
The guy who built it offered to build us a dining top to cover it, but we told him we didn’t want to splurge for that right away, plus we didn’t have a need for such a large dining table right away. My mom thought we should have purchased the dining top at the same time as the table because what if the guy wasn’t in business when we finally decided to get the top, or we just couldn’t get it for some reason? Alas, Ryan and I agreed to just wait and contact him once we were ready.
So why did I mention that last part? Because there’s a lesson to be taken from it. And that is, LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER.
Several months passed and I decided it was time to buy the dining top. (The real reason was that I was asked to host a baby shower and thought it would be perfect if I had the huge table to host all the guests and Ryan was on board<–!!) So I called up the guy who built our table and guess what? He was out of business! Mom was right again! So after several moments of panic, I immediately started looking online for other options. I never thought in a million years I could find someone to build me a poker table solid dining top at a reasonable cost, but low and behold I did! And the company I found built it for even less than the poker guy was going to. WIN WIN! So here it is in my old house. One huge solid removable dining top:
It’s made of formica believe it or not. Just like my guest bathroom counter tops. It sounds weird but it’s amazing because it withstands spills and heat. So I never have to worry about spilled drinks or putting hot pans on it, like I would with a real wood table. It cleans easily and it looks beautiful!
Here was the baby shower event I threw right after we got the top made. This is my second favorite reason for having such a huge table. It makes such nice spreads for parties.
If you were wondering what my first favorite reason for having the table top made, it’s because I absolutely love decorating it for the holidays. This was my first thanksgiving and Christmas with our new table.
It also made for good storage when we unexpectedly moved to Tampa one year later…
And here it is in our new house.
Once again, we absolutely fell in love with this house because of the HUGE dining (poker) room. It’s one of those living/dining combos. Or in our case dining/bar combo. This is the first of many blog posts on this room. (It’s probably my favorite makeover project to date)
One of our first home games in the new house with our awesome family and friends.
Here are some more up close views of the legs, and how the custom built top sits on top of the poker table. When we play poker, it takes a few sets of muscles to lift it off and lean it up against one of the walls out of the way.
And here she is during the holidays in our new house. My favorite! This is seriously a his and hers dream dining room table with it’s multipurpose fabulous-ness. As I said before, more to come on this room makeover, but I had to share the foundation and reason for it all!
Comment and let me know what you think!