Custom wood dining tables, drawn for your room

I design and build every table individually, in my studio in Geneva, Illinois, outside Chicago, from solid hardwood and, where the design calls for it, epoxy. Across Chicagoland, I generally handle delivery and installation personally, and elsewhere tables travel white glove; my tables have gone into 47 of the 48 continental states.

The pieces above are a few I’ve built, chosen to show the range. What holds the top up and what runs through it are not fixed to each other, so any of them is a place to start the conversation about yours.

What the top is cut from

A single slab top is one board off one log, wide enough to be the whole table. A bookmatched top is two boards from that same log, opened and mirrored so the figure runs out symmetrically from the join. A multi-board top is several boards laid to width. Which one suits a given room depends on the width you need, the species, and what is in the timber that week. We choose the actual boards together.

Species run to oak, walnut, maple, cherry, alder and ash. Walnut and white oak are the two I’m asked for most often, and they behave differently, in color and over time.

What the base does

The base is chosen against the length of the top and against where people sit. A trestle keeps the legs clear at the ends. A pedestal clears them entirely. An X frame and a splayed leg both carry the weight at the corners. Past about ten feet the question stops being style and becomes how the top is supported.

Size, price, and what happens first

I build to the room rather than to a standard size, so the dimensions come from the space it has to sit in and the number of chairs it has to take.

Every table is priced individually based on the size of the top, the wood and materials selected, and the work the base and overall design ask for.

And every table is drawn before it is built, to your dimensions. When slabs are used, I cut each slab out, size it against the measurements marked on it and lay the actual slabs out in the drawing. Then a SketchUp model shows the shape, proportions and details, along with AI-assisted visualizations to help you see the table in a finished space, before a board is cut.

Once a table is in the room, what it needs depends on the finish it was given. There is a finish-specific guide to caring for a wood and epoxy top.