Behind every family business is a father, or mother, who started it all. This Father’s Day, we’re celebrating Kerry Hill, founding father of Coastwood Furniture. Kerry’s passion for furniture began long before the business. It started with a single piece that held generations of family memories: an English oak extension table.
The Old English Oak Extension Table
by Kerry Hill
Some furniture is just furniture. But some pieces, like Grandpa’s old English oak extension table, have more stories to tell than a well-worn family recipe book.
My grandpa, a practical man with 11 children (because apparently stopping at 10 wasn’t an option), needed a table big enough to handle the chaos. So, he somehow acquired this grand, solid oak extension table: eight feet long, four feet wide, and capable of stretching even further with eight extra leaves. It was less of a table and more of a small runway.
My earliest memory of it was at Uncle Tom’s place. Uncle Tom, the youngest of Grandpa’s clan, had six boisterous boys of his own, meaning this table was no stranger to rough treatment. It wasn’t just a dining table; it was a battlefield, a homework station, and occasionally, an emergency hospital bed.
One fateful evening in 1973, Uncle Tom threw a 21st birthday party for a cousin, and as always, the table was front and centre. It held food, drinks, and served as the venue for a variety of increasingly questionable party games, including table tennis and blow ball (a game best described as competitive hyperventilation). The poor table took it all in stride, until the night took a turn for the merrier, and a few too many guests leaned a little too enthusiastically on it. With an almighty crack, down it went. The old oak table had finally met its match.
The next morning, with a mix of regret and hangovers, Uncle Tom and company dragged the wounded table out to the junk shed, where it sat, collecting dust, forgotten by most, except me.
Fast forward seven or eight years, and I, now a joiner and builder with a young family of my own, saw potential where others saw firewood. Rescuing the battered relic, I set to work. Removing the ancient contact plastic stuck to the top (a process that should qualify as an Olympic event) was no easy feat. Broken pieces were replaced, surfaces were scraped and sanded, and finally, the whole thing was restored to its former glory, with lacquered legs and a gleaming polyurethane finish.
For the next 14 years in Nelson and another 24 in Greymouth, that table was at the heart of our home. It saw countless family meals, arguments, board games, birthday cakes, and the occasional DIY disaster. It became part of our family’s story, just as it had for Grandpa’s and Uncle Tom's before us.
When our youngest son, Greg, wanted a table of his own, he loved the design but needed something smaller. So, in true family fashion, he set about building a scaled-down version at Coastwood Furniture, this time out of Southland beech.
Eventually, with the kids all grown and the house a little quieter, we decided it was time to pass the old oak table on. It found a new home with a very pleased buyer, who no doubt had a big family of his own. And so, its story continues.
Because some furniture is just furniture. But some pieces, well, they become part of the family.
