Distressed Painted Table - advice sought

[kelauben]

I've got a project coming up that involves building a fair sized table.  It'll be 4' x 6' with round ends and possibly 1 or 2 table leaves.  The customer would like it to not show much, if any, wood grain and will be finishing it with a distressed painted look. 

The question I have should be pretty simple.  What material?  I'm thinking maybe poplar or soft maple, but given that it'll be a dinner table, I'm wondering if I should use hard maple or something similar to insure that dents won't show from plates potentially being dropped on it.

Any thoughts, Foggers?

Thanks.

Karl

 

[tiralie]

Distressed usually means dents so poplar or pine will be fine. Poplar being less prone to dents than pine.
As the client lives with it it will get more "distressed".
I always ask and show examples because my version of distressed is not always what the client had in mind. If distressed means just paint wear but no structural distressing use hard maple.
Tim