Tables
Buy and sell tables in Costa Rica.
Ask a Costa Rican what their dining room furniture cost and the answer covers the table and every chair around it, because dining tables here are mostly sold as a matched set. Tables on their own turn up too, new and pre-owned: a coffee table for the living room, a tall breakfast table against the kitchen counter, a desk for the room that became an office, and the plastic folding tables that come out for every birthday party. Before you compare two prices, check whether the chairs are included. A set of four with one chair missing is a harder sale than its price suggests.
Dining room, living room and home office each take a different table:
the dining table carries most of the weight, and in Costa Rica it is usually listed with its chairs as one set. Tables sold bare are under dining tables, and chairs to go round one are in dining chairs. The low coffee table in front of the sofa and the nightstand by the bed sit in side tables, and work tables in desks. The breakfast table is the odd one out: a counter-height table with tall stools for a narrow kitchen.
Seats, shape and top on a dining table:
count the people who eat there every day, not the crowd at a family lunch. Allow about 60 cm of edge per person and roughly a metre between table and wall so chairs pull out with room to pass. Past six, an extending table with its leaf stored underneath beats buying big for a few days a year. The top decides how the table ages. Solid wood takes a scratch and can be sanded and refinished; a veneer or melamine top looks good for years but cannot be sanded through. A glass top should be tempered, and most tempered panels carry a small etched stamp in one corner.
A dining set counted chair by chair:
in a used set, the weakest chair sets the price. Factory sets are made in runs, and once a model has left the shops a broken chair rarely finds a match; a table with three chairs suits only someone happy to mix. Loose backs, split vinyl seats and a frame patched with nails pull the price down further than a scratch on the top. A steady table with all its chairs matching and sound keeps its value far better than the same table sold alone.
Folding tables against the party-rental rate:
the standard plastic folding table, 1.80 m long on a steel frame, rigid or folding in half like a briefcase, costs around ₡27,000 to ₡30,000 new. Event-rental companies hire the same table out for about ₡4,000 a day, with delivery and set-up quoted on top. Seven or eight parties and an owned table has paid for itself. A buyer looking at a used one does the same sum, so price it against a few rentals rather than against the shop.
Pushing on the corner of a used table:
tells you more than any photo. Lean on one corner and push sideways: if the top shifts against the legs, the bolts or corner blocks have worked loose. On an extending table, open it fully and check the leaf is there and matches the colour of the top. Look across the top in daylight for white rings and lifted veneer near the edges, and run a finger round a glass top for chips, because the edge is where tempered glass gives way. On a folding table, open and lock it twice and look for a chalky, faded top: plastic that has spent years in the sun cracks around the leg mounts.
A dining set listing with the chairs in the photo:
start with the whole set together, then each chair front and back, so nobody has to ask whether all four match. Give length, width and height in centimetres, how many it seats, what the top is made of and whether the legs unscrew, which decides whether it goes in a car or needs a hired van. Say where it is, too: a buyer in Nicoya will not drive to Cartago without knowing the leaf and every chair are there. A family moving to a smaller apartment often has a six-chair dining set to pass on, and a rental business replacing its stock has folding tables by the dozen. For a lot like that, photograph the stack and one table opened and locked.