Any ideas?

[Dave Novak]

I have a store bought, but very nice cherry coffee table. My wonderful children have made fairly large semi-transparent white spots on it (I suspect) from sitting paper plates holding very hot food on it. LOML wants me to re-finish it. I have so many cool projects lined up that I'd really rather not bump a refinishing effort to the top of the list.

I'm not positive what the top coat on it is, but it's certainly not very thick and very flat. The wood itself appears to have beeen dyed slightly as it has matured to an oranger-red than other cherry frniture I've not stained/dyed.

My first reaction was to build her a new coffee table, but that would also mean building two matching end tables, and at my pace, postpones fun projects by a couple months. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[Al Wasser]

I suggest before you go very far, you find out that in fact it is cherry and not something else,perhaps poplar or maple, with a stain to look like cherry. Secondly make sure you are not dealing with some thin veneer that you might sand thru or cause to separate with a stripping compound. Most new furniture that I have looked at is not solid wood. Then if it is good solid cherry, realize that buy removing the finish and sanding you will have a different color wood than you had before so matching the end tables becomes dicey. You might be better off building new since everything will match when you finish. Other may have a better approach

[Dave Novak]

Thanks Al. It would probobly take me less time to build new and shave fewer years off my life (I'm not a big finishing fan, much less refinish). The table is definitely solid wood, and no shortage of it, but good point, it might be maple made to look like Cherry. I was really hoping someone would say "rub some shellac on it" or something like that, but I wasn't very optimistic it would be that easy.

[Sam Yerardi]

Dave,

As Al says, try to confirm what the wood actually is. You can look at the edge of the top to see what end may be exposed which will help indicate what the wood is. Once you determine that it is solid wood, but you can't determine from the top what type of wood it is, go underneath and shave a small piece of wood off from the bottom. If the color is pink to flesh colored or darker, it is probably cherry. If it's anything lighter than that it's probably not cherry. In either case you may be able to restore the top surface by just removing the top coat (assuming that the top coat isn't colored or tinted). In a small inconspicuous location (hopefully underneath) where you can get to the finish and expeirment a bit without it being seen, you can try various solvents to see if you can determine what the top coat is. If alcohol (methyl or ethyl or even isopropyl but doesn't seem to work as well as the other two) dissolves the finish it is probably a shellac finish. If mineral spirits dissolve it it could be an alkyd varnish (not polyurethane). If lacquer thinner dissolves it, it is obviously lacquer. You may find once you've removed the top coat you'll have a better idea of what to do next.