# Questions about painting furniture...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-painting-furniture/500006>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 16, 2009, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-painting-furniture/500006 "2009-06-16T23:50:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-painting-furniture/500006/1 "2009-06-16T23:50:16Z")

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My wife and I just got a table and chairs from Goodwill. It’s a really good set, but it’s pretty scuffed up. Though I’ve done a lot of painting in my day, I’ve never really worked with wood stains.

Particularly, what I’m curious about is how to paint a design on the table. What we want to do is sand down the table, re-stain it, then paint a design on it (not a pattern, it wouldn’t cover the majority of the table, the wood would be visible underneath).

So, first of all, for the design (let’s say it’s a tree), what sort of paint should we use? Oil? Acrylic? After painting the tree on the table, should we cover that with something? Lacquer?

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**Author:** ![Harry1945](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Harry1945](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harry1945)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2009, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-painting-furniture/500006/2 "2009-06-17T02:01:43Z")

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I would paint the design with water-based acrylic, let it dry thoroughly, then top-coat it with oil-based polyurethane.

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**Author:** ![gustp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@gustp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gustp)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2009, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-painting-furniture/500006/3 "2009-06-17T04:21:20Z")

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I would paint the design with a water based paint and then put on as many coats of lacquer as it took to get the effect i wanted. The thing i like about using lacquer in home based refinishing is that it dries so fast that the finish does not get the dust in it that other longer drying materials do. I have used just about everything and I think it’s the way to go.