How I Un-Ruined Our Dining Table

I've ruined my fair share of furniture in my lifetime. I once spilled air freshener plugins on my parents' coffee table that we were borrowing indefinitely, not realizing it until the liquid had soaked in for a good couple of days, removing allll the finish underneath. Sorry, Mom and Dad!

A far more common problem is the dreaded white ring from a wet glass or fog from a hot plate. We've all done it, right? (Or perhaps one of your guests has.) I'm surprised it hasn't happened more often around here, because I got rid of all our coasters in a minimalist rampage.

Anyway, the other night, I set a super hot plate of food on top of a slightly damp towel on my dining room table. In the chaos of trying to feed the kids and myself before the quickly approaching bedtime hour, it didn't register that this was a recipe for disaster.

Here's what I discovered the next day:

😭

Biiiig ol' white ring from that dinner plate. Naturally, I went to the internet to find out if there was something I could do about it. There's no shortage of suggestions involving things like toothpaste, vinegar, salt, and more. But most of what I found seemed like a temporary fix or more damaging than the initial mess-up—um, no thanks! Apparently, the white rings are actually caused by moisture trapped under the finish, and you have to draw out the moisture in order to remove the ring or fog for good. This gave me hope, because I assumed wrongly that the finish was permanently damaged.

I almost tried a method using a hot iron per a YouTube video, but many of the commenters said it made the stain worse, or that it reappeared the next day, so I looked around a bit more. I found a different video by Popular Woodworking and thought, "Hmm. Maybe these folks know more about wood than some random amateurs on YouTube."

Just look at this guy. He clearly knows his wood.

Joshua the woodworker

You can find the full video here: https://youtu.be/CAPrChLnqN4

It's very in-depth, but all you really need to know is:

1) Obvs every wood finish is different, and this method might not work for all types.

2) Hand sanitizer on top of a folded paper or shop towel is an effective way of removing moisture from your wood furniture. The idea is the vapors from the alcohol do the job through the paper towel, without getting the table wet and causing further damage.

I got to work, with some shop towels and hand sanitizer that I already had.

If you're going to do this, you can experiment with how thick you need your folded towel so the sanitizer doesn't leak through. A double thickness worked well for me.

I started to see a little improvement after a few minutes. Whaaaat! A glimmer of hope!

I started out pretty conservative with the gel and amount of time I left it on, checking after each minute or so.

"There she goes, with another crazy project."

You can see in the pic below that it's still pretty splotchy. This was after about fifteen minutes of troubleshooting.

I found that the most effective way was to just douse the paper towel with a big square splotch instead of trying to match the shape of the ring. You might have to use several towels and a whole lot of sanitizer, because it seems that the vapors go away quickly even when there's still tons of gel left on the towel.

Getting there...

The final result: the fog ring is pretty much gone! I can't believe how well this worked.

YASSSS!

Thank you, Popular Woodworking! And especially you, Woodworker Joshua. 😉😂