So I recently took on a project for a friend – refinishing her coffee table. Not just any coffee table, it was the table she remembers her parents having in her home when she was a child. Memories galore tied to this table, including she and her sister spilling nail polish on it.

I told her I was happy to help with the table, but gave full disclosure that this would be my first sanding and staining project. After all, I’m the girl who LOVES chalk paint BECAUSE there is NO SANDING. She still put her trust and her sentimental table in my hands.

I researched and googled the process and learned the basics of sanding and staining. It’s a fairly straightforward process. Here’s where it gets tricky, this particular table has a quarter sawn top and the wood grain is going in four different directions, five if you count the band around the edge.

The basic rule of sanding is you always sand with the direction of the wood grain, never against it. So I started at one end of the table with my power sander, in the direction of the wood grain of the band around the edge of the table. Here’s a photo midway through the sanding process.

If you’re a sanding expert, you see my mistake right away. Yep, I sanded from one end of the table to the other all in the same direction. That means the sander was going across those beautiful quarter sawn pieces in the middle AGAINST the wood grain. It didn’t occur to me right away. Not until I applied the first, and then a second coat of stain did I start thinking something might be wrong. It had a very streaky appearance that I couldn’t get to go away.

Then it dawned on me – oh no! I SANDED the entire table mostly AGAINST the grain. I also applied the stain in the same manner. That is why I can’t get these streaks to disappear. Enter panic mode. This very sentimental table belonging to my friend was, in my eyes at that moment, RUINED. I had to find a way to fix it. My conscience was so heavy thinking I had ruined this table and I was dreading having to break the news, or more likely, hoping she wouldn’t notice when she saw it. There HAD to be a way to fix it because neither of those options hit me as appealing at all.

So I went back and researched more, this time googling how to fix my rookie mistake. I finally found a post from a woman who had the same problem. Her son had sanded her dining table she wanted to refinish against the grain. Some kind gentleman explained she just needed to go back over the table with the same grit sandpaper her son had used in the direction of the wood grain. Then go over it again with a finer grit. Also, somewhere along the way in my research I read that a random orbit sander would be best for this job. Originally, I used my square palm sander.

Off I went to Home Depot to purchase the needed supplies: a random orbit sander, sanding discs in 100 grit, 150 grit, and 220 grit (the higher the number, the finer the grit). Here are the steps I took to fix the table:

1. Using the 100 grit sanding discs (I originally sanded the entire table with this grit), I carefully and methodically began sanding off the two coats of stain I had applied, one section of wood grain at a time. I started with the quarter sawn pieces in the middle, sanding in the direction of the wood grain of each of the four individual sections. Then I sanded the band of wood around the outer edge of the table. It took multiple sanding discs to remove the freshly applied stain because they kept getting gummed up with stain. But I was determined to get past the stain to the wood to reverse the effects of my initial sanding and hopefully remove the scratches.
2. When I felt like I had done all I could do with the 100 grit (most of the visible streaks were gone), I then went over the entire table in the same manner with the 150 grit. And repeated the same process with the 220 grit.
3. And last I applied the stain, this time applying it in the same manner I used to sand the table this time around – one section at a time in the direction of each section’s wood grain.

And the results were weight lifting! Just look at the difference! No more streaks!

BEFORE

AFTER

This is before the top coat. I’m saving that experience for a blog post of its own.

So happy I was able to renew this beautiful table for a friend, albeit not without a major hiccup! Lessons learned the hard way are often the best remembered lessons.