Solid Timber Dining Tables
One slab, one table, built for the spot where your family actually eats. We source the boards, dry them properly, and join them so the top stays flat through a Sydney summer.
Recycled hardwood or new oak
Sized to your room to the centimetre
Delivered and levelled on site
A table that survives a family Christmas
A dining table gets more abuse than any other piece of furniture in the house. Hot dishes, spilled wine, kids doing homework with a pen that goes through the paper. We build the top thick enough to be refinished more than once, and we finish it with a hardwax oil you can patch yourself instead of sending the whole thing back to us.
Boards are joined with a loose tenon and clamped for a full day, then machined flat. The underside gets a cross batten or a sliding dovetail, depending on the width, so the top can move with the seasons without splitting. Legs are turned, tapered or steel, and the table comes apart with bolts for moving day.
Ask about a table
The parts nobody photographs
You see the top and the legs. What decides whether the table rocks in three years is underneath, and that's where the time goes.
Timber dried to the room
Green timber will cup and split the first time the heater runs. We buy kiln-dried stock at eight to ten percent, then let it sit in the workshop a fortnight before it goes near a machine.
Battens that let the top move
A wide top expands and shrinks across the grain all year. Sliding dovetails and oversized screw holes give it room, so the seams stay closed and the ends don't crack.
Oil you can touch up yourself
Hardwax oil sinks into the grain rather than sitting on it. A scratch gets sanded locally and re-oiled with a cloth, no spray booth and no stripping the whole top.
Six stages from slab to dining room
We keep it to six stages here. The one that takes longest is drying and acclimatising, and there's no shortcut around it.
Pick the boards
You're welcome to come to Surry Hills and choose from what's in the rack. Bring the room dimensions and we'll tell you which widths work.
Agree the size
Seats per side, walkway behind the chairs, and whether it needs to extend. We draw it at 1:10 so you can see the proportions before we cut.
Join and flatten
Boards are planed, matched for grain, glued with loose tenons and left clamped overnight. Next morning the top runs over the jointer and through the thicknesser.
Fit the underframe
Battens or a dovetail rail go underneath, fixed so the top can move. Legs are assembled and the whole thing gets a dry fit on the workshop floor.
Sand and oil
Grit goes up to 320, with the grain raised and cut back between coats. Three coats of hardwax oil, hand buffed, then a week to cure before wrapping.
Deliver and set up
We carry it in, bolt the legs on, level it on your floor and take the packaging away. If the floor is old and won't sit flat, we shim the feet and trim them to match.
Tables that left the workshop
Sizes and timber are listed under each photo. Most of these were made for a specific room, not picked from a size list.
Three sizes, three honest prices
The figures below are current starting points. Timber choice moves the number more than anything else, so ask for a quote on the species you want.
Up to 1.4 m long, recycled hardwood
- Straight-edged top, 35 mm thick
- Tapered timber legs
- Hardwax oil finish, three coats
- Delivery within 25 km included
Up to 2.2 m long, six to eight seats
- Slab or joined top, 45 mm thick
- Steel or turned timber base
- Sliding dovetail cross rails
- Levelling and set-up on site
2.6 m and over, or a built-in leaf
- Matched boards across the full width
- Butterfly or end-draw leaf mechanism
- Book-matched grain on request
- Two-person delivery and assembly
Things to know before ordering
Timber behaves differently to board, so a few of these come up every week.
Send us a questionHow the tables settle in
Two recent builds, both still in daily use with kids sitting at the table.
Give us the length and we'll send a figure
Send the seat count, the longest wall the table has to fit, and the species you fancy. A written estimate reaches you inside two business days, and nobody rings afterwards unless you ask for a call.