Farmhouse Dining Tables

Farmhouse dining tables come in many styles, but they are normally massive, chunky and oblong. The term 'farmhouse' is the same as 'rustic' and 'country', so really farmhouse dining tables can be made from any locally available timber. If oak is widespread where you live, then your farmhouse dining table should be made from oak, but if you live in Thailand, farmhouse dining tables are more likely to made from teak. That is not to say that you can buy whatever type of dining table you like, of course.

Farmhouse Dining Tables

The term farmhouse dining tables is really a very local term, which means that it signifies different things to different people. 'Farm house', 'rustic' or 'country' mean using local resources, which normally means wood, because it is more easily crafted than stone. In the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere, local timber usually means oak, birch or walnut if you are thinking of hardwood, or pine if you are thinking of softwood. Softwood is a lot cheaper than hardwood.

Local farm house tables may be rectangular or round by traditional design and style and on a pedestal(s) or legs and may be carved or not, simply or intricately. It just depends on where the style comes from in time and location.

However, an Italian farm house style table might be made of olive and in Asia it might be made of teak. If you want to choose one of the farmhouse dining tables from a different region or country than where you live, it will probably be more expensive.

The characteristic that all farmhouse dining tables have in common all over the world is that they are chunky, massive and therefore heavy. For example, typical farmhouse dining tables in Thailand, even amongst the poorest in the villages, are three by three metres of massive teak., requiring eight to ten men to lift them. They are often open to all weather, but are expected to last a minimum of twenty years or more.

The European equivalent will usually be housed indoors because of the weather and can last hundreds of years. It will be rectangular and equally as heavy. However, modern houses can rarely accommodate such large dining tables, so these days they are a lot smaller, although they may have a drop leaf or two. They are usually solid and massive.

'Solid' and 'massive' are the important words here. Authentic farmhouse dining tables are not just veneered, although you will see cheap rustic, farmhouse tables offered all over the place, which is just veneered MDI or pine.

We have all seen real farmhouse dining tables though; the kind that you could bury an axe in and not worry about it. Usually, this type of furniture was used for preparing meals in the kitchen and dining rooms in poor homes, but was used 'below stairs' by the kitchen staff for the same purposes in the houses of the rich.

Nowadays, these old fashioned farmhouse dining tables, often bearing scars of having been used as the tools that they really were, are highly sought after as antiques, which is where the modern movement towards using farmhouse dining tables comes from.

The real farmhouse dining tables are items of natural beauty and are very expensive, but you can replicate the style of this dining room table or kitchen table at pennies on the dollar if that is what you want, you just need to do some homework first.