Repairing your table and chairs.
Are your table and chairs in your home looking worn out and in need of repair? Check out our quick and easy fixes for your table and chairs.
Home furniture experiences a great deal of everyday wear and tear. With all the use, tabletop stains, wobbly chairs and scratched floors are almost inevitable. Here are cheap, quick fixes for some common table and chairs furniture problems.
Wobbly Table: If a trip to the hardware store is out of the question, turn the table over, put a blob of silicone sealant on the bottom of the offending leg, and let it dry. Then flip the table over and it should be stable. However, you can do a more formal fix by purchasing nail-in leg guides (small plastic feet). Buy the adjustable kind to ensure you can stabilize the table. Use only one if a single leg is noticeably the short man out.
Pitted Table: Small dents are a cinch to remove. Prick the surface of the dent several times with a fine-point needle and then cover with a moistened cloth. Put your iron on low heat and iron the cloth until it begins to steam. The moisture will infiltrate the wood and swell the wood fibers, filling out the dent. The steam will raise the grain so you’ll need to lightly sand after raising the dent. Note: A word of caution! Don’t use this technique on a table covered in veneer–the veneer will separate and peel up once you steam the underlying adhesive. Now there’s a table and chairs fix we bet you didn’t know!
Wooden Rings On The Table: Drip a few drops of machine oil on the surface of the wood and mix in some ground pumice (available at home centers) to make a loose paste. Rub the paste around the rings with the tip of your finger until the rings are gone, then wipe off the paste with a damp cloth and dry the surface.
Table Finish Wearing Off: Rotate the dining room table just as you would a mattress. Small families tend to sit at the same places, causing undue wear at those points on the table. Rotating evens out the wear for both your table and chairs.
Candlelight Dinner Disaster: Don’t despair. Freeze the wax with a freezer-pack or an ice cube in a plastic bag. When hard, the wax can be chipped off the table with the edge of a credit card.
Replacing The Rubber Stoppers: The metal legs of your kitchen chairs cut right through their end caps, scratching your linoleum. Replace the end caps with new rubber leg tips (available at home centers) and stuff a coin or metal slug inside each tip before slipping it on the end of the chair leg. The coin or slug prevents the end of the leg from cutting into the rubber tip. Voila, new table and chairs!
Chair Rungs: One of your dining room chairs is complaining and splaying every time someone sits down on it–a lawsuit could be only a matter of time. Over time and prolonged use, chair rungs can work themselves loose. The simplest way to remedy the situation is to inject white woodworker’s glue around the rung and clamp the legs until the joint dries. Chances are, you don’t have woodworking clamps lying around, but don’t let that stop you. Strap a belt around the legs, compressing them together by notching the belt as tightly as possible. Once the glue dries, chisel any excess glue that has bled out, and the chair will be stable once again. Nothing better than a stable table and chairs.
Rocking Chair Repair: That favorite rocking chair is in danger of leaving its mark on your lovely–not to mention expensive–hardwood floors. Line the bottom of the rocking chair runners with the self-adhesive protective felt stripping often used on the bottom of doors. You can find it at hardware stores and home centers.