What is a Veneer?
These tables are extremely heavy and made from solid wood. or are they? How do you tell? There are few different methods of determining if a piece of furniture has a veneer. A veneer isn’t necessarily a bad thing and can be real wood. However, a veneer is a thin layer of wood on top of another. If you look closely at the table at the right after refinishing and below, before sanding, you will see that the wood grain goes in different directions in the center of the table compared to the outside edge. Also, if you were to look underneath the top of this table, (picture below) you would see that it is made of 2x4’s. It is solid wood, but the top decorative pieces that allow the grain to angle in different directions, is a veneer.
Before:
As you can see in the Before pictures above, these tables were in pretty bad shape as far as the surface goes. However, they are heavy, solid tables with nothing else wrong with them. If you look closely at the top of the large table (center) that it is divided into 4 sections of wood that has an angled grain. If you look at the top of the small table on the right above, you can see that it has triangular sections of wood that give the top a pattered grain. In order to create this look, the builder used thin slices of wood on top of a thicker piece of wood.
*Learning point -
This is the underneath of the large table top which is pictured above center. If you look closely, you can see that boards make up the thickness of the top of the table. The angled grain that you see above are thin slices of wood.
Why is this important to know?
First of all, knowing if the veneer is real wood is important because it will contribute to you deciding to paint or stain. Secondly, if you have a wood veneer such as this and you sand too aggressively, you will sand through the veneer to whatever surface is below.
When purchasing pieces of furniture we often ask (or should) “Is it REAL wood?” The person selling it will often say yes because they are not knowledgeable. If possible, you should take a look at a piece before buying and if not possible, try to get as many pictures as you can.
Table Top after Sanding
Luckily, this table came completely apart which made it so much easier to sand and paint. If you look at the top of table above and compare it to the picture at the right, you can see that sanding cleaned it up considerably. It is now ready for staining. I chose to stain it a darker color - Dark Walnut - and I really like the contrast of the wood with the painted surface.
I chose to paint using this nice gray from Wise Owl called Gray Linen and then I antiqued it with a black wax. The overall look of the table is distressed because the wood already had little chips and scratches in it and I wanted to enhance that. I call this look a Country Chic.
*Learning point - Maybe you’ve noticed that the end tables and coffee tables are not identical….or maybe you haven’t. Many times you will find furniture pieces that don’t really “go” together but you can make them look like a set by using a similar style when you refinish.
