Dealing With Dents and Scratches in a Wooden Table

If you have decorated your home with country decor chances are you have a wooden table as a part of your furniture. If the wooden table you have is made of a soft wood it is going to be exceedingly prone to dents and scratches. So, what do you do when these occur? For many people, damage to the table is a source of frustration. They want their tables to look new and beautiful and at the same time want to be able to use it. The good news is that a dent or scratch is nothing to cry about. There are simple steps you can take to make them go away.

Scratches

The most likely thing that is going to happen to your wooden table is that it is going to get a scratch. This could be from something as simple as someone sliding a plate across the table, a child rolling their toy across the surface or even relocating that lamp you have on the tabletop.

The first thing to do is assess the scratch. Is it a rather shallow scratch? If you have a very shallow scratch it is possible that all you need is a coating of furniture polish or wood polish to fill it in and make our wooden table look like new again. Often these scratches are nothing more than a scratch in the finish on the wooden table and not the wood itself. If you have a deeper scratch, you can go to the hardware store and will be able to find wood filler. Often, you can find the filler in the same color as the table is made out. Read the instructions and apply as recommended which usually means place a small amount of the filler on a cloth and wipe it across the area that is scratched. Sometimes, you will need to then follow this up with an extra coat of finish or sealer that had been used on the table originally to make it all looked the same.

Dents

A dent is a little harder to deal with. First, you have to consider how big of a deal the dent really is. Can you live with it? If not, it is a time to prepare for a bigger project to remove it. For the most part, this process means you have to sand down part of the table. What you will want to do is sand the surface around the dent, to make the whole area around it on the table top even once again. Once the sanding is complete you have to refinish the table. This means a coat of finish, paint or stain to make the table look the same way it did before you began your dent removal project.

A couple scratches and dents do not mean the end of the world for a wooden table. With a little know how and a little patience you can make your table look new again.