Want to know how you can re-establish your wooden tables/furniture? Check out the steps below. It is common to have your wooden furniture wear off at some point in its life.

But there are ways available for you to restore/re-establish the wooden furniture of yours. You will need a lot of supplies to carry you throughout the process to perfectly restore your wooden furniture.

Then, of course, you will have to recolor your furniture with a good quality wooden color to make it look good as new.

There are several methods available, but here, we will show you the best and foremost way to restore your wooden furniture. The methods to restore wooden furniture are given below-

1. Required Tools or Supplies
Firstly, you have to ensure you have all the required tools to restore your wooden furniture.

The supplies you will need are-
● Sandpapers with a minimum of 80 and 100 grit. Assorted grits on hand would be much better.
● Sanding block.
● Power sander could be reserved for the sanding block, or you can use
a palm sander or any random orbit sander, but be gentle while doing power sanding.
● Stain your furniture if you plan on changing its color.
● Choose your preferable wax, finish, oil, or paint. Select from Tom Bradly for best 2021 recommendations.
● PVA glue or wood glue.
● Cloths and old rags.
● Brushes.
● Ruler.
● Protective goggles.

● Vinyl or latex gloves
● Respirator.

Now, let’s proceed with the steps for restoring your furniture.

2. Look For The Damage
You have to look over your furniture to find the extent of its damaged piece. It could be like it was scratched badly, or its finishing was scratched through bare wood, or the existing finish was destroyed— Mark out those to strategize your plan ahead.

If you find any of the above-mentioned possibilities, then you will have to do a more vigorous type of restoration to your furniture. If not, then you will not need that much time to finish your restoration successfully.

3. Sanding The Furniture
Make sure you are maintaining your safety by wearing a dust mask, goggles, etc. before sanding the furniture. It will be a very dusty step, so be well prepared for the consequences.

Start by removing the original finish, or what is left of it, using the sandpapers. Sand by its grain; you can start with 80 grit paper to remove those faster, then go upscale in grit to remove harder finishes. Be careful not to sand the wood surface, or it will be damaged.

Keep doing the sanding process evenly throughout the furniture to completely get rid of the original finish. Do not try to overdo the sanding to make it look natural; it will look different normally after sanding.  Also, do not forget about your furniture’s legs; they will need sanding too.

You can detach the legs from your furniture, then sand it for more accessibility. Of course, sand by the grain for your furniture’s legs.

4. Do The Repairs
After the sanding process of your furniture, you can now focus on the replacement of any parts or any wood working repairs.

Older wood furniture tends to get their legs wobbly than others. It is best to repair it after the sanding. You can insert wood glue or PVA glue between the wobbly joint of the furniture.

Do not try to save up glue when repairing these types of furniture because you will need all those glue. You can squeeze out the extra glue if you think you have put in too much glue.

In a worse scenario, you might have to nail your furniture again to make it operate properly because sometimes the joints might fail on you, and it will be impossible to fix with glue.

5. Do More Sanding
Yes, you might have to sand the furniture again with 100 or 120 grit sandpaper if you have started with 80 grit to remove the scratches.

You have to do it again to get the smooth surface out of your furniture and prepare it for a good finishing. Just be careful not to rush the process; this step is so important that it technically determines how smooth your finished furniture will be.

The more sanding part is better after you have done the potential repairs of your furniture. Make sure you have enough time to do this because you should not try to rush this step at all.

6. Finish Your Furniture

There are numerous ways or options to finish your furniture. Some of the best options are- French Polishing
This is one of the best finishes available on wood, but it will take a lot of time and elbow grease.

This method requires the usage of shellac, diluted and dissolved in mineral spirits/alcohol, which is usually used with a rubber.

This is a wad of cotton, which is all screwed into a ball and wrapped around with a soft piece of cloth. The shellac solution is used with the fad in a circular motion.

Staining

You can stain your wood if you have light wood to make it dark. Also, you can stain your already old stained piece of wood to make it look great again.

Follow your instructions guide of the selected wood or stain dye.  There are a lot of stains available for staining for your furniture. Choose the stain dye you like the most.

Oiling
Oiling finish is much more dependent on the type of oil you use in the process. But if you happen to select a good one, then you have nothing to worry about.

After you have used the oil on your furniture, you have to wait for at least 15 to 20 minutes, then you will be able to wipe off any excess.

Waxing
Waxing is a good way to finish wooden pieces, but it is not the best protection for a piece and might need re-waxing regularly.

The Bottom line
After you are done with the finishing, you have completed the restoration process of your furniture. There could be other methods, but these are the best steps we recommend to you for the proper restoration of wooden furniture.

author bio

Tom Bradly
Based on more than 15 years of personal, first-hand experience as a professional handyman and woodworker, Tom has authored over 1,000 articles about how to succeed in the handyman business.

Tom teaches all the tricks of the trade that he’s learned, ranging from which tools he prefers to which woodworking plans he has had the most success with. His Woodworking Toolkit blog https://tombradly.com/ is regarded as one of the authorities about woodworking tools on the internet.