What's the problem with Red Oak.

Good question. I have built several side tables and a chest of drawers in red oak. The wood worked well and they are IMHO solid and quite lovely, and in the case of the chest and one of the side tables have aged beautifully over 40 years. Visitors still comment about them. I have no idea why some folks think it is "trashy." 

Perhaps one mark against is that red oak doesn't have as dramatic ray flecks as white oak. If I was building a Stickley style piece I'd go for white oak and fume it to better recreate that look. But that doesn't seem your son's objection. Another possibility is that  oak figure and grain don't work well with all furniture styles. Maybe your son didn't think the wood matched the table style?

Apart from my musings on red oak: After your DIL asked you to make the table did you discuss your plan with her and/or your son? And did your DIL and son talk about it? Seems like a communication breakdown, here.

My experience has been that red oak grain can look wild if care isn't taken to line up cathedrals and straight grain.
Sometimes the cathedrals aren't parallel to the edges cathedral reversals don't always look right.  The straight grain on one board needs to be aligned with the straight grain on next board in a glue up.  Otherwise the grain looks like it is going wild in different directions.
I've seen commercial glue ups that are just ugly.  Especially bad are face frames and doors where no attention to grain is made.  I expect rails to look horizontal, stiles to look vertical and match vertically where they meet.
I like red oak because I can get long, thick, wide boards, mostly knot free, and relatively cheap.  The length is nice for a table but the grain may be too flashy for a table.   I've been leaning more towards cherry lately but it has been difficult to find long lengths that are clear on both sides.  Usually one side has a lot of sap wood.

I think red oak is considered the Buick of woods, only old people like it.

Added later 06 min 32 s:

Peter Martin wrote:

Hmmm. I would tell them to buy a can of paint and deal with it.

I did that to our kitchen cabinets, eighties style with tombstone panels. 
The ugly grain still shows through the paint.

Son's distaste can be as much a personal esthetic (if not more) as a technical matter. 

For example, the only place I tolerate Silver Maple (A. saccharinum) is in a bucolic river valley. It's 3x garbage and dangerous for a street tree. Someone else may love it for hitting "monster" status in 10/15 years in the landscape, but I consider that 15 years of waste when the paper pulp truck is called in. The distaste translates to furniture wood also.

https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/ycn1qk/why_all_the_hate_for_red_oak/

I think the problem people have with Red Oak is that many of the commercial furniture makers just put boards together as they come off the "pre-cut" part rack.  This usually results in a tiger striped or every which way cathedral layout that isn't appealing to the eye as Carlos noted above.

I've made a fair number of pieces from Red Oak and when I make parts I look at the grain patterns and try to orient them so you can't tell where one poard ends and the next begins.  This makes pieces more appealing to the eye.

Here are some of the pieces I've made from Red Oak:





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As someone here once said the problem with red oak is it's "in-your-face grain". It is too garish and coarse for my taste.

Somewhat related and may be of interest:
https://www.woodcentral.com/forkbb/post/2324595#p2324595

And this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9ywTHnqnPo
https://www.woodcentral.com/videos/?c=UC3LT-e7q8bRr4bf2OUrglDw
Small family-run lumber yard. The girls, Emerald and Jade, who run the sawmill and yard, call their dad "Boss Man"

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I live in New Mexico where most traditional furniture is/was made of pine because few hardwoods grow naturally in the Southwest.  Because I want something that is less prone to dings and dents than pine, I use red oak for most furniture and cabinetry.  

BTW, I am old, Mark N., so I find your comment about only old people liking red oak a bit offensive.

So I got out some white oak and dressed it, laid it on top of the red oak table and I really can't tell the difference.  I am pretty sure any non wood worker would not notice.

You can’t fight fashion and red oak is unfashionable today. 

I have no doubt it will come back in about 40 years after anyone the can remember how popular it was in 1980s is gone.
 
Walta

I probably have this wrong, but the dark part of red oak, the figure itself, seem to be the reverse of what we normally get.  It is dark, and the contrast is light.  If that is correct, then it probably has something to do with the pores.

The colour isn't very nice, it has a tendency to demand either stain, or varnish (to level out the course texture).  The vanish yellows it further, and then it darkens, and the whole effect is kinda dirty.  Back in the 70s, when the stuff was everywhere, they used to put it out in millwork, planer marks and all.  Tiger stripe you know.  I was never happier than when it finally died.

Yet:  It is still about the only hardwood every yard up here actually stocks. So it isn't just old people who like it, though why not?  They lived through decades of the stuff.

It was the wood used in the first kitchen I built, and where I cut my first hand cut dovetails...  Late 70s.

It is the wood in my kitchen and bathroom as I moved into a Cabinetmaker's house, and he probably read Krenov because he used slipjoints throughout.  He did a decent job and I can't throw it out.  Plus, he ran the styles one way in some places and another way in others.  I can actually see the gears in his head moving when I look at his work.  I can't get something like that from the contract makers.

And yet, it does look really nice when it is worked by hand in chairs, hay rakes, and longbows...

Mark Nowicki wrote:

I think red oak is considered the Buick of woods, only old people like it.

Added later 06 min 32 s:

Peter Martin wrote:

Hmmm. I would tell them to buy a can of paint and deal with it.

I did that to our kitchen cabinets, eighties style with tombstone panels. 
The ugly grain still shows through the paint.

 Fill with 5 minute of other epoxy first.  It takes a real stake to the heart approach.

Barry Irby wrote:

My Daughter on Law asked me to build her a dining room table. I built if out of red oak that came from the yard where my son grew up.  Turns out my son hates red oak.  Now he wants me to build him another table out of Ash or Pecan or anything but red oak.  I see comments on line about how trashy red oak is.  What's the deal?

Wow, those are two ugly step sisters of woodworking.  Pecan I am not familiar with, but I always worry when a wood is in as much demand for smoking at furniture.  I guess at least it can be disposed of if it doesn't meet with approval.

I once made a little table out of cherry over hickory.  It looked really nice, though hickory is another wood people love so much they can't get enough of burning it.  I wonder if given you have a base, is there anything they would actually like, that might make a nice contrast as a top?   Thereby you would only have to turn out a new top.  Or what about giving the top the "Walnut" treatment.

Speaking of really old stuff.  We have a very clever extending table, at the farm, that was made of red oak, and came from the Eaton's Catalog (think Sears).  The IKEA of it's day.

The death of red oak prestige