There are all sorts of different defects that you need to deal with on a piece of furniture, such as huge scratches because you weren't careful as you transported it, or a tear in veneer that occurs while sanding.
After taking apart your furniture, a good first step if you wish to change the color of a piece is to strip off the old finish. Sometimes there are surprises when you strip a piece of furniture. For example, the table on the left was supposedly made of oak, but stripping it revealed it was made of birch and maple. For the table on the right, beautiful bookmatched walnut veneer was hidden under that thick red stain.
Once the furniture is stripped, it requires sanding. Be sure to use appropriately shaped tools to make the job easier! You can easily make custom sanding blocks out of wood to fit your piece, or use scrap from around the shop like a piece of dowel or a random offcut.
When it come time to stain your piece, carefully tape the edges of any part you wish to protect, then add a paper cover over the center to prevent stain from going where you don't want it to.
With your piece stained, it's often useful to tone it to enrich and even out the color. On this black table, a dark, dark brown toner was applied on the right half of the piece, but no toner has been applied on the left yet, only black stain. Adding the brown toner makes the black color darker and more uniform, and can help blend in any uneven staining that was applied. The difference is easier to see in person, especially as you change the lighting around the piece. Toner also has a more noticeable effect on colors that aren't black.
Accidents happen to the best of us: here, the veneer on a tabletop was sanded through, leaving a very noticeable mark. Touch-ups are a big part of refinishing, and it can be very challenging to blend in your repair. Here, various pigment powders which match the tones of the wood are chosen, then mixed together with lacquer and very carefully applied to the damaged area using small paintbrushes and a delicate touch. The refinisher is essentially painting in the wood grain to match the piece, and getting the exact right color and pattern is a very tricky and precise art.
There are many small and subtle improvements that can be made to a piece of furniture in refinishing. Here, soft pads were added under the legs of a dining table to protect the floor, and the old brass legs of a coffee table were buffed to a shine. Many other additions can be made if desired. such as adding latches under a table to hold its extension in place, or purchasing a glass table top where there was none before.
Sometimes we try to restore a piece by keeping the original color and repairing any damage, other times we elect to refinish the piece and change the color completely to match a different piece. In the case of these images, the dining table and coffee table were being refinished to match the nightstand on the right to create a set.
