Zinc is soft. I wanted zinc countertops in my dish storage area and ended up choosing pewter for that reason. Copper gets rings and such, it will be a very rustic look imho

Zinc will scratch and dent but is probably the most forgiving. Brass tarnish will rub off on your clothes.

Do a concrete table. Love mine. Lots of styles..

They’re cold/cool to the touch. During the cooler months especially they’re uncomfortable for me to rest my arms on. For that reason alone, I’d never buy one for my home.

Lynn makes a really good point. I just went to my kitchen to see. Yes, the pewter is cold, as cold as my marble. I also have a zinc topped pastry table I use as an island. They all feel colder than my wood countertops and wood tables.

I have a marble top desk in my office; actually made from a remnant from my white marble island. I love the ultrasmooth surface for writing but I don't like to sit at it in the winter! IN fact I was thinking of getting a wood top to set on top of my marble top!

A local restaurant has a copper bar that I adore, but you can definitely see rings and marks from pretty much every drop of every beverage that was ever spilled on it. It's not for everyone.

Concrete is worse than marble at showing etches, nicks, stains, and everyday life. Look at your garage floor before you decide you want industrial chic. Or, you’re going to have to coat it in plastic. Which defeats the point, and you might as well use Formica laminate. It’s much more durable. Many designers in the 50’s snd 50’s used laminate Nate for that very reason.

This table from Aram in London is quite pricy, but perhaps it could serve as inspiration for having something made that suits your requirements. It is walnut with Corian.

Corian is warm to the touch.

Corian and laminate are both on the soft side and will scratch but both are slightly resilient to different extents and forgiving. A dropped or tipped glass is less likely to break. Corian is the same throughout and a limited number of laminate are the same color throughout so scratches show less especially on lighter colors. Since they are plastic theyve gotten a bad rap but I think they are both great products.

I think it's interesting that we've culturally moved away from just covering the table up when kids are young. I grew up in the era of the formica kitchen table, and the wood dining room table, and the wood dining room table had pads that were heat resistant and meant to be used under a tablecloth. (and I got these for my good table, too).

When I was seven we moved into a house with a wooden kitchen table and we used placemats and or a tablecloth and we actually did projects on the dining room table with the pads on it and something over that.

Most people I knew had some sort of cushioned pad for their table for everyday use.

That's ugly you say? But so is a scarred kitchen table.

I am not judging one way or the other I am just saying that it used to be acceptable to cover the table to protect it, but it no longer is acceptable, but it is acceptable to have the table top ruined as a result. It just seems to be a part of how our culture has changed in the middle class.

I have three kids, who are now 20, 18, and 17. I covered our wood table with an oilcloth or coated cotton (very popular in France) tablecloth, which I still have on the table most of the time. Makes clean-ups very easy. But then when the kids were little I never poured them a full glass -- they'd get an inch or two of milk or water, and then could have refills when that was done.

I can't imagine having a cold metal table, or a concrete table which would mean regularly shattered glasses and dishes. Yikes. We've home schooled for the past 14 years, so the kitchen table is our desk, science lab, and craft area too.

I will also mention that it seems like yesterday when those three aforementioned children were under five years old. Time flies. Don't buy a table now that you'll need for just a few years.

My use of tablecloths is considered pretentious by some people I know- granny by others and anachronistic by my friends.

"... it used to be acceptable to cover the table to protect it, but it no longer is acceptable, but it is acceptable to have the table top ruined as a result. It just seems to be a part of how our culture has changed in the middle class."

We grew up with custom table pads, too. But that was in part because we did need the DR table to do double duty. Today, everyone has home offices, and sometimes craft tables, wrapping tables, etc. We essentially have four dining tables in our house.

I think covering a table on a regular basis (other than placemats and tablecloths) is kind of like not using the silver or china or crystal ... I would make sure my guests enjoyed it, why not me?

Because it's relatively short term: kids grow up fast, and while they can cosmetically damage a table pretty fast at a young age, especially if it's not a very good table, if you cover it for a few years, they will then be old enough to not be spilling and getting marker on it and things like that.

So it's not really the same as keeping a sheet over the furniture all the time except when company comes over. It's temporarily preserving it so you can uncover it in a few years and leave it uncovered without either looking at a damaged top (which is not particularly enjoyable) or throwing it out and getting a new one (which is wasteful).

Fwiw it's not too hard to find a faux zinc table - Ballard has several, so does Crate & Barrel. Our kitchen table is from World Market and I like the metal top for regular use with kids; it stands up to everything my kids throw at it. They're past the little kid stage but two boys (plus friends) can still make a mess.

I need to replace our dining room table thanks to gouges from a bin of Legos. For a long time, I'd left the table pad and table cloth on it but decided the room looked nicer with just the plain table. Whoops.

In our small house, durable surfaces are a huge plus. I'm looking for something a little more traditional but both C&B and Room & Board have simple parsons tables that you can customize with marble/stone/quartz tops. Might be a good option for the OP.

One could always have a piece of glass cut for the top of a favorite table.

We have a fairly small house, and have a farm too, so durable is always good. Our everyday table is the same one (plus chairs) that I first bought in 1990 from JD Brauner Butcher Block in NYC; my parents had bought one there in the late 70s to replace our Formica boomerang table). Our bigger special occasion table, which lives in a storage shed in between holidays, is c1900 English mahogany 12-seater. The chairs are a combination of 1960s Kindel mahogany reproductions from my parents, and a set of Georgian chairs from about 1820. My current project, before we move into the new house we're building on the farm, is to unify and refresh both sets by recovering them in the same indoor-outdoor fabric. I would love to find a couple of sets of vintage cork-backed Pimpernel placemats because I've heard the new ones peel apart easily.

kids grow up fast?

If you have 1, that is 18 years without seeing your table! If you have 3 and space them out, it could easily be more like 25 years! And by that time you will have cataracts and can't see it anyway.

I did get a glass top for one table, because it is a custom cherry Stickley that I had in my K in my last house, and in this house I actually had to add on a room that could use a round table, and that is our "Craft room". The kids literally paint there, so I felt i really had to do glass.

Becky - I just came across a box that I hadn't seen since we moved 7 yrs ago, with Pimpernel placemats! Does that count as vintage? I'm not sure they work in our casual home. I have to try them; they have big magnolias on them.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pimpernel-Cloverleaf-magnolia-placemats-set/dp/B000AYYPZM

I would say by first or second grade they might have a pretty good idea of how to eat at a table or do other tasks without damaging it. I doubt they destroy their desktops at school

We had a formica kitchen tabletop growing up. Wish mom had never gotten rid of that thing, it wore like iron which is what I think the pedestal in the middle was. That or steel. The table was round and white but I know they made rectangular ones. We had steel chairs with vinyl seats. Groovy and would be oh so retro now. Then when mom went country in the 80's the table got a tablecloth and was matched with wooden chairs. My dining room table I inherited from mom, she got it when we grew up. It is gorgeous wood but I always cover it. I'm the spiller/gouger in the family. Growing up, our "dining table" was a steel one that folded up in the basement except when we needed it for entertaining. It got a tablecloth and a mix of kitchen chairs and folding ones for family holiday gatherings.

mtnrd, I think the magic year is 2006, when Pimpernel was sold to Portmeirion and Portmeirion decided to start making placemats more cheaply in China. It should say on the placemats or the box if they're made in China or made in England. It's the newer ones that peel, sigh.

pal, yup. Going by my kids, by the time each one was about 8 we were good to go, literally and figuratively. Part of the reason we've been sticklers about table manners is that we home school and work around the home (farming), so we are around each other all the time. Civility matters. And we like to go out to eat at nice restaurants, so the kids needed to know how to behave there too. Also helped on airplanes, where flight attendants seem bowled over by (un)common courtesy.