Last year, my sister-in-law inherited a poker table that belonged to her Grandfather. She had the perfect place for the table, but wanted to update it’s look and asked if we’d be willing to refinish it for her.
Here’s a picture of what the table originally looked like.
To start off, we removed the felt covered cutout from the center of the table, removed the table top from the base, and hand sanded them.
We used a Classic Black Minwax PolyShades to darken the color of the wood without loosing the textured look of the grain. Over about a weeks time, we applied 4 or 5 coats of the PolyShades to get an even coat on the surface, taking time to wet sand between each application. Normally, it wouldn’t have taken as many coats, but because of how dark the stain was, I wanted to make sure we had even coverage. Since we knew that the table was going to get it’s fair share of wear, we added a finish coat of polyacrylic before moving it.
To finish off the table, my sister-in-law re-covered the circular cutout with grey felt, then set the cutout into place.
And here is the refinished poker table!
I'm sure Grandpa would be proud. It's beautiful!
Oh yes he would! As soon as us grandkids could count he had us playing 21!
How did you remove the felt covered center piece?
The piece in the center was just laid in, so it was easy to lift out.