I love craigslist; not only can you save perfectly good items from the dumpster (yay going green) , but you can save some serious cash. Tuesday's are normally for my thrift store finds, but I found this AWESOME table on craigslist, and couldn't resist posting. My current press board table wasn't going to survive move number four in April, so I was really excited when I found this sturdy birch piece. The new table did have some problems (mainly scratches from the previous owner's cat), but for 50 bucks it was hard to pass up. Now, I have no clue about repairing furniture, but those claw marks had to go. After a quick internet search I discovered my 3 options
1. Completely strip the item then re-stain or replace the veneer
2. Prime and Paint the whole item
3. Use "Restore-A-Finish", Markers, and Woody putty to correct flaws.
The coffee table's original color matched my currently living room set perfectly, so I opted for choice # 3. Using #0000 steel wool and dark walnut "Restore-a-Finish" I lightly buffed out 95% of the tables blemishes. The one remaining scratch was colored in with a dark walnut stain pen. Below are the "before" and "after" pictures of the table just using "Restore-a-Finish"
Table after all corrections were made (click to enlarge).
Table ........................ $50.00
Restore-a-Finish ....... $9.00
Stain Pen ....................$5.00
Total cost of new table $64.00
After purchasing this table I was able to sell my old wobbly coffee table on craigslist for 20 bucks so I really only spent $44.00, and prevented two items from getting trashed.
