Gunner the Great Dane must have gotten hungry while we were out as he decided to eat the corner of my wife’s favorite dining room table :smack:. Now both Gunner and I are in the “doghouse” (he’s my dog, so obviously my fault). Gunner is almost two years old and this is the first time he’s chewed anything. Not even so much as a chomped sock since he was a puppy. So his days of being free in the house while we are gone have come to an end.
So, back to the problem. We now have a dining room table with chomped corner. If I want Gunner and I to ever get out of the doghouse I best find a way to fix this. I have made a call to a local furniture restoration guy, but with it being Saturday I don’t expect to hear back from him until Monday. So to possibly put me at ease, can this type of damage be repaired? Is it likely to cost in the hundreds, thousands? The table cost around 3k new, but that really doesn’t matter as my wife had an emotional attachment to it, so damn the repair cost, it has to be fixed.
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You can view Gunner’s artwork here. Dropbox - IMG_20130511_104031.jpg - Simplify your life I apologize for the low quality of the picture. I only had my tablet camera available. Thanks in advance.
What is the finish like?
Is it a smooth, uniform color, or does it show wood grain?
If it is a uniform finish, then it should be pretty easy to fill, sand, and re-finish, although it might require re-finishing the entire table.
As noted it can be filled, sanded and re-painted whether it is solid wood or furniture board. You can do this yourself. However, the above won’t work if the table is stained. Filler can be stained but it will not match very well. This is something I do fairly often.
It’s repairable. Find local furniture craftsmen. There are also franchise operations, one is called something like Furniture Doctor. The corner has to have a very strong repair if it can’t be just sanded out, but it looks like a heavy finish that will cover the repair. However as beowulff says the whole table may need refinishing. Trouble is, that can be expensive if you don’t do it yourself. And the refinishing may be the difficult part for doing it yourself if you want it to look as good as it did before. Even though it may be a high quality table, there are low cost replacements that will be functionally and esthetically just as good. I’d suggest sanding it out, refinish just the damaged area as best you can, and put a tablecloth on it.
Based on the photo, it appears to be veneer (based on a straight chip on the right side edge) that has been rolled from the top over to the edges. Veneer can be repaired and pieced into the damaged areas before the table in completely refinished. The repair will not be completely invisible as a casual inspection will show the patched area of new veneer that will have a different wood grain appearance. The only method of perfect veneer repair is to remove all the veneer, replace it and refinish the table. If there are matching chairs, they too would need refinishing in order to keep a match. This cost may be a jaw dropping experience.
If the top is solid wood, the gnawed corner can be sanded and filled before complete refinishing but chances are this too will be visible to your wife. Furniture repair/refinishing is expensive and I recommend that both you and your wife pepper the estimator with questions about how visible the repair will be once completed.
It looks like it could be covered with the right decorative furniture corner guard. You can google those keywords to find lots. Although you may need to do a combination of sand, fill, and stain, before adding the corner guard. And this assumes that the sand, fill, and stain by itself isn’t quite sufficient in the eyes of someone who has seen the horrible damage to her beloved table and knows exactly where to look.
Certainly the table can be refinished. Good as new. At a significant cost.
You can try matching the stain and just fixing the corner. But it will probably show. It’s right there on top for the light to catch it. A chewed table leg would be easier to stain and not be noticed.
What you need is a basic oil wiping stain. Sherwin Williams has one in about thirty color choices. Match the color. Dip a rag in the stain (just a small corner) and wipe it on the table. Let it sit a few minutes and wipe off any excess.
take one of the chairs to Sherwin Williams. They should color match a stain pretty close. They do need a sample and a chair is easier to carry than the table.
