Tables

Dining tables, breakfast tables, coffee tables and desks:

each answers to a different height. A dining table sits at the height of an ordinary chair, while a breakfast table goes higher, a counter- or bar-height table with stools that often stands against the kitchen counter or takes the place of a breakfast bar. The low pieces, the coffee table in front of the sofa and the nightstand beside the bed, are under side tables, and study and computer tables are listed under desks. Chairs sold without a table go in dining chairs.

An extensible table or a fixed one in an apartment dining room:

the choice comes down to how often the table has to grow. A table long enough for six on the one day a month the family comes leaves no room to walk round it the rest of the time. An extensible table solves that, either with a butterfly leaf that folds away inside the top or with a loose leaf kept somewhere else. The butterfly kind opens faster and the leaf never goes missing; the loose kind is simpler and has less to go wrong. The top matters as much as the mechanism. Ceramic and sintered-stone tops, common on store tables in Guatemala, take a hot pan and a knife without a mark but chip at the edges and corners, and a chip does not come out. Glass wipes clean and shows every fingerprint. Wood and veneer feel warmer and mark under a wet glass.

The price of an extensible table against a fixed one:

the mechanism, and the ceramic top that usually comes with it, roughly doubles the bill. A fixed melamine or MDF table for six, 160 to 180 cm long, sells new for about Q900 to Q1,600, while an extensible table of similar size with a ceramic or synthetic-stone top runs about Q2,200 to Q2,800. A used extensible keeps that premium for as long as the mechanism runs smoothly and the leaf comes with it. An extensible table that no longer opens is a fixed table with a seam down the middle, and should be priced like one.

The leaf, the slides and the top of a used extensible table:

show how it has been treated, so open and close it before agreeing a price. The slides should run without lifting the table off the floor, and the two halves should meet flush, with no step you can feel across the seam. A loose leaf kept in a closet for years often comes out a different shade from a top that sat in the light; it is cosmetic, but obvious once the table is open. On ceramic or stone, run a finger right round the edge for chips and look hard at the corners. On glass, check the edges and look for the small mark that tempered glass usually carries in one corner. Then turn to the legs. On flat-pack tables they bolt into a metal plate or a threaded insert, and a table that still wobbles after the bolts are tightened has a stripped thread rather than a loose one. On a breakfast table, push the top edge: a tall table on a single pedestal magnifies any play in the base.

Open and closed measurements for the table you are selling:

are what an apartment buyer checks against the floor plan, so give length closed and open, width, height and how many it seats each way, and photograph it both ways with a close-up of the seam. Name the top honestly: ceramic, sintered stone, glass, veneer and melamine sell at very different prices, and a buyer who expected stone will notice. Say whether the legs unscrew, because a top lying flat fits vehicles a standing table never will. For a breakfast table, say whether the stools are included and whether their height suits the table. Whoever drives in from Fraijanes or San José Pinula for a glass-topped table will want to see the glass on its base, then carry it out separately in a blanket, so have one ready.