Refinishing my thrifted dining table and 7 things I learned while doing it

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For the last eight years since Pinterest came about, I have been planning out my dream everything — my future wedding to the husband I hadn’t met yet, outfits I was definitely not wearing to my college classes and my perfect home.

While this ideal home of mine has changed over the years, the one thing that has stayed consistent is my desire for a wood dining table. I think they are so timeless and add so much texture and life into the home, as well. A true statement piece!

As much as I would love to just walk into a Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware and buy a table like it’s no big deal, I definitely do not have that kind of money in the budget. Even a decent table from most retailers is still several hundred dollars. So I told myself since we lived in an apartment anyways, we should just save our money and wait.

As luck would have it though, I stopped at my favorite furniture thrift store one day and found this beauty! I was so excited! This store often has pieces donated from large retailers and they are always priced insanely low, so when I saw this one I just couldn’t pass on it. The best part? My table was only $100 brand new!

Almost everything about it had my heart, especially the detailing and turned legs. What I wasn’t crazy about was the color. I actually walked away from it and continued around the store, until I realized this was too good of a find to pass up. At $100, I couldn’t feel too guilty taking this table home and redoing it. I knew once I did, it would be the dream table I had always wanted!

Today, I’m going to take you through my process of stripping this table down to a lighter, more natural wood tone and all the bumps I ran into along the way.

EVERYTHING I USED FOR THIS PROJECT

CITRISTRIP | MINERAL SPIRITS | WOOD CONDITIONER | STAIN | SEALER | DROP CLOTH | STEEL WOOL | PLASTIC SCRAPER/PUTTY KNIFE | PAINTBRUSHES | FOAM BRUSH | SANDPAPER | SARAN WRAP | GLOVES | MASK | TACK CLOTH | WHITE CLOTHS

HOW I DID IT

Before I started re-doing my piece, I did some research on the best techniques and products to use. I ended up reading a lot of good things about Citristrip and how easy it was to use, which seemed like a better option than the strong smelling liquid strippers I had tried in the past. So I grabbed some Citristrip gel with high hopes that I could strip this baby pretty quick and call it a day.

Once I got home, I cleaned my table and took it apart. I laid everything on a drop cloth, with the legs standing on their own upside down.

The entire process of striping really comes down to a couple simple steps: paint the stripping gel on, scrape the goo off after a certain amount of time, wash the remaining stripper off, dry, sand and then move on to painting or staining. However, I definitely have to say I struggled with this process and had to repeat some steps a couple of times — but, hey, it’s all in the learning process!

My plan was to try everything on the removable leaf first, that way if it all went downhill I could at least crawl back to my newly shortened, but not ruined rest of the table. Or, you know, worst case I could just paint the entire thing, but that wasn’t the look I was going for.

After doing a quick spot check with sandpaper, I moved along with the stripper. When using Citristrip, you need to apply it on thick in order for it to work. As long as it is wet, it will continue to work for up to 24 hours. So, I took my cheap paintbrush and slathered the gel on nice and thick.

I wrapped the leaf in saran wrap, as was highly suggested by people who had used Citristrip before. Leaving everything sit for about 20 minutes, I came back to check on it and discovered the stripper had dried out already. I was super disappointed. My guess was that this happened because I was doing this project in the middle of the high August heat and humidity, a running theme throughout the entirety of stripping this table.

Adding another layer of stripper on top of the dried goop and leaving it sit for about five minutes allowed me to scrape everything off in one shot. I used a flexible, plastic putty knife and scraped the stripper right into a cup for easy clean up.

Once I removed all of the stripper, I used mineral spirits and steel wool to clean the table off. This worked pretty well, but didn’t remove some small spots that didn’t strip all the way down. I tried sanding those spots, but they proved to be tough.

For comparison, in the photo above, the left side is the main, untouched table and the right is the leaf that I have now already stripped and cleaned with mineral spirits. You can see the brown spots along the edge. I decided to just set the leaf to the side and come back to figure out the spots later.

Now moving on to the main table top and legs, I again began brushing on a thick layer of Citristrip and again had it drying out within 20 minutes. So instead of working on other sections of the table or legs while I waited for one to dry, I ended up just waiting about 8-10 minutes on each small area I worked on. This method took longer, but seemed to work better.

After cleaning the surfaces off with mineral spirits and sanding, I still had some darker spots where the stripper didn’t work long enough. While trying to figure the best way to fix this, I moved onto stripping the edges and apron, which I surprisingly had no problems with.

I realized I was going to need to repeat the stripping process once more to take out the couple of darker spots on the table top and to get in the grooves of the legs that I hadn’t seen because I had the legs upside down.

Since a majority of the wood was already stripped, this process went really fast. I didn’t have to leave the stripper on long and it, thankfully, wasn’t drying out this time. I also made sure to use the mineral spirits immediately after scraping so it would hit the stripper while it was still wet. This was key! Everything worked perfectly this time around!

Finally, after more than a week of working on this table (hey, those legs are a lot of work to do by yourself) everything was stripped off and cleaned. I now had the very light and natural wood table I was going for!

I gave the table a couple of days to dry while I decided how I wanted to finish it. I went back and forth between leaving it alone, staining or using a lime wax. Ultimately, I went with a white wash pickling stain just to lighten the wood up a little, since I expected the sealer to possibly darken the finish.

Using a foam brush, I first applied wood conditioner, spreading it all over and then wiping it off after a minute or two. This actually made the table darker, so I was glad I decided to do a lighter stain to help combat this. Once it dried, I sanded it down and wiped off the dust with a tack cloth.

The next step was staining. Again, I brushed this all over and wiped it off after a couple minutes. This stain went on more like a paint and not like other thin liquid stains I’ve used before. Because of how thick it was, I knew I was going to have to do some serious sanding.

It seemed to be more work than it should have been, but after sanding everything, this table was gorgeous. The white was soaked down into the grain and mixed with the natural peachy wood tone perfectly. I was in love! I decided to leave the stain heavier in some areas, like the legs and edges, to give it a little more character, too.

Lastly, I needed to seal the piece. I applied three coats and sanded in-between each one. The recommended cure time is 24 hours before normal use and 2-3 weeks to fully cure. I did wait about three full weeks before setting anything on the table just to be safe.

I am so happy with how it turned out! I’m already ready to jump into my next project, but maybe after a short break :).

WHAT I LEARNED FOR NEXT TIME

This was definitely a learning experience for me. Though I made frustrating and silly mistakes, I have a better understanding now of things to look out for in the future! We all have to start somewhere right? So while this isn’t a professional’s “how to get the look” tutorial, I thought it might be helpful to someone out there that is learning or struggling right along with me.

1. Check the weather! High/low temperatures or high humidity will affect how products (not just paints) work and how fast they will dry.
2. Use your after wash or mineral spirits while your stripper is still wet! If your stripper dries before you get to washing it, just reapply a tiny amount of stripper and then wash. It should come right off!
3. Take a minute every now and then to step back and look at the big picture. Are you sanding too much in one spot? Did you miss scraping any of the stripper off? Did you apply too much stain in one area? Did you forget to flip your legs right side up? 😉
4. Use chemical resistant gloves. Mineral spirits will eat right through disposable ones.
5. Grab extra supplies at the beginning of your project. I quickly ran out of some items and had to make several trips to the hardware store.
6. BE PATIENT. This one is really hard for me!
7. Remember you are doing this for you! Maybe it won’t turn out perfect or it will take you longer than you hoped, but be proud of what you accomplished!