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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

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Behold! Our Vintage Oak Dining Set

November 20, 2015

It was about two years ago that I began campaigning hard for a table and set of chairs from a local library. It was at that time that the library, after a long, political budget planning process, was finally green-lighted to be rebuilt in a brand-new state-of-the-art facility. That new library opened this Fall.

The old library in town had been last furnished in the 1960’s with amazing, solid oak shelving and library furniture designed in the height of the midcentury era. I’ve admired it for as long as I’ve lived in Rochester, and especially after we purchased our current house and laid light wood flooring throughout. If you want to go into the vault for a minute, Pete and I had purchased a totally radical midcentury danish mahogany table 3 years ago on a whim because it would have been perfect for a home that we had been trying to purchase. When we ultimately ended up in our current house instead and then proceeded to install maple floors, we knew we would want to swap the dark mahogany for something lighter and more fitting to the style of the home.

Something like this here, a photo I snapped years ago:

Vintage oak library table.

I’m totally glossing over exactly how much effort I put into making myself known to the library director and town officials as part of this ordeal (because it was a lot and borderline embarrassing), but as you can sense it was all worthwhile when I was able to go into the closed library last month and select the most solid and damage-free pieces before the remaining inventory was sent to auction. If you’re wondering, we did make a donation in exchange for the furniture in the amount that they were projected to sell for at auction, but it was still far from the cost we would have incurred to buy a new solid oak set for our home. I just lucked into having first dibs without the auction paddle process.

Midcentury oak library table from the Myrtle Desk Company, 1963.

Library furniture that dates back to the 1960’s, as you might expect, isn’t without a lot of wear and tear. It all needs to be refinished, which was part of the appeal to me all along and totally befuddled some of the higher-ups with which I networked. The tabletop itself isn’t is poor condition by any means, and it’s a lot better than some of the other tables that were on site – one or two deeper scratches, and light scuffs.

Midcentury oak library table from the Myrtle Desk Company, 1963.

These chairs have seen a lot of butts, and while most of the pieces are in solid condition and totally void of teenager’s initials and love messages carved into the finish, I can’t even begin to tell you about the gum, oh god, all of that old gum. But wouldn’t you know, the original paper tags from the manufacturer are still stapled to the underside of each chair marking the date of manufacturer, the Myrtle Desk Company from High Point, South Carolina, May 1963. Amazing.

May 1963, the Original Myrtle Desk Company.

Cleaning the chairs was my first effort. Murphy Oil Soap diluted in water and all of my elbow grease removed decades of scuff marks and dust, and cleaned the exposed raw wood in areas where the finish had been worn away. Here’s what each leg looked like when we brought them home:

Damaged leg with scuffs and worn finish on a midcentury oak chair.

No arguing that they cleaned up perfectly. Refinishing the chairs is going to be a long, more time consuming process than the refinishing the table, but knowing that these pieces have withstood 50+ years of use really bodes well for how long we can expect a new finish to last in our home.

Midcentury library oak chair.

One more gross picture: Want to see the underside of the seats, the part you grab when you’re pulling the chair in to sit upon? Yeah, you do. Vom!

Dirty underside of oak midcentury chair.

I’ll document the cleaning and refinishing process in another post someday; for now, with the chairs cleaned and ready for our family, I couldn’t help but get them into position in our dining room.

Attaching legs to our new vintage library table.

Voila – dreams come true.

Midcentury library table used as a dining room table.

The green chair on the end is a piece I bought from Abode Rochester about a year ago, but still haven’t used extensively; it fits much better with our new oak table than it did with the mahogany table, but it still needs to be refinished. For the time being, it’s a nice end seat for our toddler.

Midcentury library table used as a dining room table.

We have 8 chairs total, thinking two could go on each end when we need to accommodate guests. For everyday use, we’ll be keeping three of the library chairs on each side.

Vintage library oak chairs.

I have another story about whole library thing that I’ll fill you in on next week if I have a chance to write the post during the holiday break. Until then, sitting pretty in our home!

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Being Thrifty  / Casual Celebrations  / Dining Room

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

9 Comments


Julia
November 20, 2015 at 3:50 pm
Reply

How cool that you scored those from the old library! Do you know which branch they came from? My family frequented both the East and West branches when I was growing up, so the chances I used that table at some point is high. New library is pretty amazing.



    Emily
    November 20, 2015 at 4:49 pm

    Chairs West, Table East! We got really lucky.

Staci
November 23, 2015 at 3:23 pm
Reply

Ah! The feeling I get when I look at your dining room is “this is how it was MEANT to look.” You are doing such a wonderful job and bravo to all your hard work and higher-ups-bothering… it has so paid off. I’m head over heels for your new set-up. :)



    Emily
    November 23, 2015 at 3:57 pm

    You’re so nice. It’s really getting there! The light will need to be updated, and we have other plans in mind too, but it feels good to finally have it in this state.

Cait
December 1, 2015 at 9:24 am
Reply

The table and chairs look great! Not at all what I pictured when you were telling me about them, but it fits perfectly in your space!



silas
December 12, 2015 at 10:57 pm
Reply

wowo that looks awesome!



Jane
January 20, 2016 at 10:26 am
Reply

Wow, what an amazing find!! Congrats – super exciting. I would have campaigned hard too, no matter how embarrassing :)



Beth
October 25, 2022 at 6:54 pm
Reply

What color stain will you/did you use to refinish it? You will keep it that blond color, right?



    Emily
    October 25, 2022 at 8:50 pm

    I used a General Finishes transparent stain! I thought I had written about it, but can’t find the post. You can see how it currently looks here: https://merrypad.com/2020/02/20/sherwin-williams-snowbound-white-walls/

    I think this is the pre-stain treatment I used: https://amzn.to/3zgk0Wt
    And this is the actual satin finish: https://amzn.to/3FioBvo

    Getting the old finish off was time consuming but worthwhile. The new finish has held up really, really well.

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  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

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