Kitchen Table Top-Part 1

One of the projects on my current list is to refinish our kitchen table top. When we moved into this house six years ago, we put this table in our attic for storage. We recently brought it down to use, and found the damage from previous use was worse than we remembered. The attic environment didn’t do us any favors either.

The good news is, the base of the table is in good shape. As long as my color matching skills are up to it, I can get away with refinishing just the top.

There are hazy blush marks from in the finish.

Here’s a chip in the finish. In the glare in the lower left corner you can also see where the finish cracked from being in the attic.

Some cardboard boxes were stacked on the table and left these marks on the table top.

One trip to the hardware store and I thought I had everything I needed to get started.

Chemical stripping isn’t fun, but the finish on the underside of the top came off pretty easy.

The top side was a different story, though. After a few applications and some scraping, I got through the clear top coat and a few layers of tinted finish. That’s where this project bogged down. By now, I’m out of stripper, but a quick trip to a nearby store fixed that. Also, you’ll have to talk to my kids about why the sawhorse has a head…

I’m assuming the clear base coat was a catalyzed lacquer or something similar. After several tries with the chemical stripper, I was still left with a layer of hard clear finish. Chemicals would attack it, but wouldn’t make it very deep before it became too dry to scrape or scrub off. Out of daylight, and out of stripper again, I cleaned every thing up as best I could, and figured I’d get a fresh start the next day.

So this is what it looked like on day two. The hazy finish is what was left of the tough base coat.

Not wanting to mess with chemicals any more, I grabbed my sander and some 80 grit disks, said a quick prayer that I wouldn’t sand through the veneer on the top, and got to it.

After about an hour and a half of sanding all of the base coat was gone and I was down to bare wood. I finished sanding up to 220 grit and called it a day.

Here’s my plan for finishing the top:

• Stain with a solvent based stain
• Seal with shellac
• Spray 3-4 coats of tinted vinyl sealer followed by a few clear coats of sealer.
• Top coat with 2-3 coats of pre-catalyzed lacquer

Hopefully I can get this wrapped up in the next week or two.

Keep you posted…