Custom Dining Tables Elevate your home dining experience with your own, unique style.

A custom dining table is a one of a kind piece of furniture that will last for years. Buying a custom table is not an inexpensive purchase so you want to make sure you get it right. Some things are obvious, like, what size and what color. Something that is not so obvious, is the moisture content of the wood. Wood acclimates to it's environment. Therefore where the table is made, needs to be considered when purchasing a custom table.

I tell customers that you can take a table from here (Colorado) to there (the Midwest, South or one of the coasts) but not from there to here. The reason being is that wood in Colorado is considered to be dry around 6-8% moisture content. In places that have humidity, wood is considered to be dry around 12% moisture.  When wood comes from there to here, it finds equilibrium around 6% and therefore can be susceptible to movement and cracking.

This happens because the moisture in the cells dries out forcing the cell to shrink, which can cause the wood to twist, warp, check and crack. For example, a 40" wide glue up table could shrink as much as 1" when going from 12% to 6%. Wood that goes from here to there, increases in moisture and could expand by 1". Wood that expands is highly unlikely to twist, warp and crack.

If you look at tables in the box stores you will see that a lot of the ones that are solid wood, are from places like Indonesia (jungle and high humidity) and will be cracked and warped. The tables that are not solid wood will have an MDF or plywood core and  a thin veneer and may look nice, but they are not good quality and that is why they cost less. I use only solid wood, dried to 6-8% moisture content for my all of my tables.