Mom’s Coffee Table

This is a fix job on a project I designed and made in the basement of my Jessup home. I lived in Jessup between 1990 and 1994, so this project was probably made in 1992 or later — about 30 years ago, in other words.

It was a pretty simple table, designed by someone who had only the roughest idea what he was doing (ie, me). It had a frame for a top, into which were originally two extra ceramic tiles that were bumming around my dad’s garage. I was experimenting with some early curve work, and this table had curved and tapered legs, held together at the bottom with a framework of stretchers. It looked nice, and it never occurred to me until years later that the glue joint between the legs and the top was really weak.

My sister brought it back to me because it had been handled … roughly … by the cleaning people at my mother’s house. Honestly, I got off easy, because the thing broke right along the glue lines, so all the pieces remained intact. Those joints at the top, where the leg ended in a stub about 1/2″ high with mitered sides that was just glued to the corner. Two of those joints failed, and there was so little dried glue to remove that it was no wonder why. Why was I so stingy back then? I don’t know.

As luck would have it, though, I’d bought some Totalboat Thixo for another coffee table project (which will get its own post), so while I had it open for that I also reglued the joints on my mom’s coffee table. It’s probably good for another 30 years now.

But there was another problem. The more I looked at it, the more I hated the finishing job I’d done. It was red oak, but stained walnut to match other furniture in the room. The stain job was okay, but the clear finish I’d put over it was a total botch job, with runs and drips everywhere. How did I let this get out of my then-shop like that? (Poor lighting was probably at least part of the reason.)

I couldn’t send it back like that. At first I tried gently sanding, just to get the cheap poly off, but inevitably I took some of the stain too. And the stain was an old water-based Carver Tripp wood stain, which is no longer made. Shit. So I ended up sanding all of it off.

Of course, I didn’t get it all — the Carver Tripp stain had embedded itself into the red oak’s grain, and there was no getting that out. But okay, that’s fine. I got a can of General Finishes water-based walnut stain and applied that, but it was a godawful mess. Streaks, dark splotches, I hated it. Hated it so much, in fact, that I threw away the can and sanded it down a second time.

I figured if I was going to restain it — and I had to, because it wouldn’t fit in the room without that — I would switch to an oil-based stain, which would apply evenly. Then I could use good old Arm-R-Seal as a top coat, and I knew that would work well.

Lowe’s had, of course, Minwax oil stain in early American walnut, so I got a small can of that. I still had about a third of a can of Arm-R-Seal and it was still liquid, so I could use that. The Minwax stain applied easily and evenly with a staining pad, and the Arm-R-Seal equally well with a rag. I did 3 coats of Arm-R-Seal and it was ready to bring back to Mom.

It’s a little lighter than it was originally, but once I got it there and we put the glass panels back in (the tiles having been repurposed long ago) it fit right in place. I told Mom I’d had to refinish it and she understood. Mothers are so forgiving!

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