I've been thinking about a new dining table and chairs for years. I was just about sold on the Basque collection until I saw it in person at C&B.

The problem I'm having is my current set is rock maple, and it has stood up to all kinds of abuse. It's bulletproof. The other problem is it's from the 50s, Early American style, a little too many little pieces and turnings. So, I hate its style, but damn, the wood itself is awesome.

I just can't find anything that grabs me. Also, must have at least one chair with arms.

Look up "Hunt Country Furniture".

I'm not sure about the quality, although I think it must be decent considering the stores here that sell it, but I've always liked the styles from Canadel Furniture...canadel.com.

A word of caution.....my son and DIL bought a dining set with a bench on one side and regret it. No one wants to sit on the bench and the people that do seem to get up when the meal is over...sitting on a bench with no back support is not comfortable.

Check out Saloom furniture. They specialize in dining furniture, and their quality/value equation is great. Made in the U.S., too.

A neighbor of mine has a dining table and chairs hand crafted from the amish. Solid as a rock. Quality is outstanding.
http://www.amishoutletstore.com/page.cfm?p=41005

Here is a link that might be useful: Amish Outlet

Here are the chairs for about $200 each.
Close in style to the CB chairs.

Here is a link that might be useful: Amish outlet chairs

Here is a bench for $300, but that's for the 72 inch and you could order smaller so I'm sure it will be cheaper for the smaller one.

Sorry for all the separate posts, I'm on a work PC and cant seem to do it any other way.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bench

spam reported

Not sure if that is really spam - it would have been on the old GW, but Houzz seems to encourage companies to promote themselves here. I have a Pro Houzz account at work (for another furniture company), and Houzz keeps trying to get me to promote the company even more. I have not really checked to see what their policies are, as I joined Houzz at work mainly to do research to see what other furniture companies were doing and to compare various existing designs - not to promote the company where I work.

The company I work for is not in your price range, but I would recommend going to estate sales and find some vintage mid-century furniture. That's how I got my dining set, but it only seats six.

For sturdiness, a trestle style table works very well, but they usually do not have extensions. I used to have a table like this in my dining room, and I especially liked it because it was so sturdy and so I liked using it as a sewing table because it had absolutely no wobble. It was also great for laying out fabric for cutting patterns. It was easy to disassemble, and I have it stored flat on an upper shelf in my garage at the moment - I just couldn't get rid of it!

Apparently, pros are not allowed to post links to their businesses, at least here on GW area.- Just for clarification, my post about spam just above Lars' post, referred to spam that's already been removed by GW/Houzz.

That's good to know - there must be different rules for the GW area. On the Houzz side, they ask for links to your businesses and also try to get you to publish a web site with them. I guess they are trying to maintain some of the old GW feel here, which I think is good, although it might be confusing to some.