Go for the table size you want to live with that gives you enough room to walk around. On holidays or whatever, you can put a piece of plywood on the top and cover it with a fancy table cloth to seat however many you want. You can screw a little stopper on 4 sides to sit outside your round table so it will not shift. Decorate it up. No one will know!!!
Also, if you can find a round table that comes with a lazy susan (you can find formal ones as well as casual) the table will feel cozier and being able to spin the food solves the reach problem inherent to round tables. I just sat at one the other night. It was pretty formal, and eye opening how comfortable it could be.
some examples http://www.houzz.com/round-table-with-built-in-lazy-susan
Oh my goodness! Sorry I repeated, I didn’t read all of the posts! Great minds!
Moser makes great furniture - but sadly very pricey. Our regular dining table (antique from Greatgrandmother I’d never have chosen one this size) is 54" wide - without leaves it’s 60" long and there are enough leaves it could sit 18 I think if we had enough chairs or a big enough dining room. We have a lazy Susan, but not really big enough to be useful. We serve dinner the old fashioned way with all the food in front of host who fills the plates. We also have a round table which because of construction we are using now. It’s 44" in diameter. We can put four people at it and food for dinner though it’s snug. We also can also have five or six people for playing games.
I have to admit - I don’t know why going from circle to oval is so undesirable, though I guess one is likely to have arranged the room for one or the other arrangement.
Well, yes, the room would be set up for one or the other. In addition, if one needs to add the leaf and the table becomes an oval, IMO one might as well have a rectangle. I don’t think there’s that much difference between an oval and a rectangle.
I once found a web site for a company which sells lazy susans. They had several styles/materials to choose from. Of course, I can’t find it right now.
You can have custom made lazy susans made by several places on the internet and there is a place called Lazy Susans by Mary that sells a wide variety including large glass ones.
@gouf78, that’s the one I remember, Lazy Susans by Mary. Thanks.
We have a nice white marble lazy Susan on our round breakfast room table. It was my mother’s and is the only thing in 44 packing boxes of “stuff” that we use on a daily basis.
Much of the rest went to the “bag a week” thread destinations.
The lazy Susan fits in the center, still leaving enough room for four place settings which works for us on a daily basis. We have an oval in the DR for the few occasions when we have too many people for the kitchen.
These are the people who made our lazy susan: http://www.lazysusans-r-us.com/index.html
I agree no difference between an oval and rectangle, but if 90% of the time the round table for 4-6 is what you want - and every once in a while you have a big sit down dinner - it wouldn’t bother me if the table switched shape. At some point I think round tables become inconveniently large. I don’t want to feel like I’m in a Chinese restaurant with the huge lazy Susan.
But if I had some of those pretty lazy Susans in #49, I might not feel that way!
Don’t be cheap-just get one of these 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XShLq53HRbs
Edit–found the manufacturer’s site http://www.fletchertables.com/gallery/
One more edit $50,000 to $70,000 back in 2007
^^^OMG, WOW!
This might work too
http://interesting-innovativepics.blogspot.com/2013/05/wooden-leaf-shaped-dining-table-set.html
Another view of Parent1337’s first table:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ_AwFSWIPU&list=PL7554D20A373A78CE
amazing!
OMG, those are awesome! I would LOVE one. But that’s not going to happen in this lifetime. @Parent1337, where did you find the prices?
My neighbor has a rectangle table like that, where you pull both ends and the leaves come up from the underneath. It was her mother’s and is mid-century modern. She had it shipped from CA after her mom passed away. It’s a beautiful table.
There is a manual model that is about $20K, give or take, made with reclaimed barn wood. Those handmade tables are lovely too. I don’t have a large enough dining area to comfortably house either of those types of tables, but the wood alone is just lovely!
@HImom: Where did you see that? I’d love that table with reclaimed barn board!! $20K is still really pricey, obviously, but maybe I can sell my husband to pay for it.
When I was very young, my family had a very large round table for 12 people. One thing that is very special about that table is that the (circle shaped) table top is in one piece - the whole piece was cut from a large oak tree. It must be a very large oak tree. (This was made 5 generations ago in another country. It would definitely be against the law to use such a tree for this purpose today.)
Now I thought of it, it was really a treasure. I heard that nowadays it is unlikely (maybe against the law) to use such a large tree to make a table. I think our family acquired that large round table 4 or even 5 generations ago. (Depending on whether it counted from me who is near the retirement age or not.)
My mother actually disliked it at that time, saying that it was a hassle to store it and the large round table was used very infrequently, like one or at most two times a year. It was a pity (from my point of view) that they got rid of it when I was early in high school. (They might have just given this treasure away to somebody else, hmmm…maybe to the new owner of the house where we used to live.)
Also, I do not know what kind of paint they put on the surface of the table. The paint was still as shining as new after so long - I do not remember we ever need to resurface and repaint it. (We dent it a little bit though because it was very difficult to move such a large and heavy table top around.)
I hope the new owner take good care of it.