Refinishing A Coffee Table

When we moved, it was time for some new furniture in the family room. We purchased a sofa & love seat, but that's where funding ran out! So I decided to refurbish our "old faithful" coffee table. I've painted quite a few pieces of wood furniture, but refinishing is torture a lot more work. {Click here to see my refinished bathroom cabinet}. 

Click on the blue bar below to read more . . . 

This particular coffee table has great bones, but it has been "loved" by our family for about 15 years. The boys climbed on it, scratched it {accidentally?} & our dog Sam chewed on the corners when he was a puppy. Here's what the finish looked like before . . .

It actually looks a lot better in the photo than it did in real life. The bummer about staining is that you have to sand first. It took days to sand the old stain off all the nooks & crannies. Sanding also helped take care of the deep scratches & the places the dog chewed. This is the kind of sander that we have had FOREVER! It is an easy-to- use workhorse.

Black & Decker Mouse Sander

The staining was the easy part! I wanted to match this piece we have in our entry way. 

Thanks to our cousin Melanie, I knew to remove a door from the cabinet I wanted to match. I took it to the paint store & they mixed the formula until we got it the right grey/taupe color. I like a satin finish for both the stain & the polyurethane topcoat.

As you can kind of tell in the picture above, I wanted the knots in the wood to show through. I also primed & spray painted the pulls black to coordinate with the hall sideboard.

I feel like the project was a success. The finish looks very similar to the hall piece I was trying to match. And for very little money, our coffee table looks new again.