$15 Garage Sale Mid Century Table Gets a Refinish

I found this table at a garage sale for only $15 it was in okay condition I could tell that somebody had already refinished it and it looks like the finish that they applied was just a clear glossy polyurethane the color looked a little pale to me and I wasn't a fan of the glossy finish so I decided to refinish it in a deeper darker color with a satin topcoat closer to what the original finish would have looked like this table was made by Lane furniture in the 1960s and it was part of their acclaim line of furniture which was a very popular line in the 60s and is still popular today I started by stripping off the existing finish and this was a little tougher than usual most of the pieces that I work on have the original lacquer finish which is usually pretty easy to take off but the polyurethane on this one was a little tough and I had to apply the stripper a couple of times to get all the finish off and I have noticed that when stripping polyurethane when I first put the stripper on it usually turns dry and white like this within maybe five minutes and I have to remove that and then apply the stripper again and then that usually gets off the rest of the finish and then I just took some mineral spirits and steel wool and removed whatever was left of the stripper residue and some people would probably just stop here and put a clear finish on it as it is it does look pretty good but I'm going for a more uniform finish over the whole table with less contrast between the light wood and the dark wood so that's what I'm gonna go for here's the table after its dried from the stripping process and it's just about ready for sanding but there is one hole in the veneer on top that I want to fill first and to fill that hole I'm gonna use this timber mate wood filler this is a water-based wood filler and its really good for shallow fills like this it dries quick it's really easy to work with and this particular one is walnut coloured then it was time for sanding and for the top I used an orbital sander with 150 grit paper and then followed that with 180 grit paper i sanded the rounded edges by hand and I also sanded the legs by hand for the stain I used gel stain by general finish's and I actually mix two colors together I used walnut and candlelight the walnut is mostly brown and the candlelight has more red to it so the two together gave me the color I was looking for and I use this on the top and on the legs I let the stain dry overnight and the next day it was time to spray some lacquer here's how it looked after the stain dried it looked good but I still wanted to get more consistency in the color over the top with less contrast between the light wood and the dark wood so to accomplish this I sprayed some toner lacquer on it and toner lacquer is basically lacquer with color added in this case it's a walnut colored lacquer I sprayed very light coats it's a very subtle effect and I'm not sure how well it's even going to show up on camera but I was just going for a subtle toning effect I wasn't trying to make it look like it was painted just went over it a few times with very light coats and it just helps to draw the whole piece together and just give more consistency to the color over the whole piece once the toner lacquer had dried I went over the whole piece with some clear satin lacquer these laying acclaimed tables always had a black foot on the legs and they were just painted on so I just took some black acrylic paint and just brushed it on and then later went over it with some clear lacquer and here it is all finished and here's how it looked when I started just for a comparison thanks for watching you

Channel: Dashner Design & Restoration

Views: 252,974

Rating: 4.886878 out of 5

Keywords: mid century, restoration, refinish, diy, lane acclaim, furniture restoration

Id: FrGO9upVdt4

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2019