Vintage dining table refinishing project

Vintage dining table refinishing project

• 1.31.2025

I’ve been looking for a dining table for about two years, since I started refreshing my dining room with some more traditional pieces and getting rid of the modern traditional/Farmhouse look I liked when I first moved in. This house was built in 1937 and is a Tudor revival, but has a few federal revival elements in it too, and that’s my favorite style of old houses. 

I’d been scouring Facebook Marketplace and had given up my search, but then this vintage Ethan Allen table with three leaves and lovely curved legs popped up in my feed. It was in rough shape, but I think it was $60. And miraculously fit in my car. I picked it up after work and then my dad helped me get it out of the car and into the garage where it’s at for months, overwhelming me.

I mentioned to a friend that I had a dining table to refinish and she said she’d help me. I should’ve asked her before, I knew she was good at refinishing furniture! Anyway, I’m so happy I did and I now have a much better dining table in my dining room!

Vintage Ethan Allen Dining Table Refinishing

I actually called a couple places to see how much it would cost to have them either just strip/sand it down for me, or refinish it entirely. I got quotes from $400-$1,000. Not bad for a new dining table of heirloom quality, but significant enough that I reconsidered doing it myself. This table is from the 1980's and one of the places I called said that was after they had switched to some finish product that was harder to strip... hm.

I started sanding down the top and leaves, but the legs were tricky. I ended up not actually sanding all of the carved parts, because I was going to be going for a similar stain after it was all done. Those parts weren’t scratched so didn’t need an so didn’t need sanding, and it actually worked just fine to blend them with the new stain.

I really should’ve done this when I first bought the table over the summer, because it was freezing outside, so we had to bring it all down to the basement (and then my house had a slight stain smell for actually a couple weeks after. Do not recommend).

I did one coat of stain, and then ended up doing three coats of this triple thick polyurethane. The first coat, I used a brush, and I could really see the brushstrokes which bothered me. 

So I sanded down lightly and did a foam roller. Then it had a foam bubble texture. 

For the final coat, I used a little foam brush. The result is a very smooth surface! I also bought the gloss polyurethane because I was rushed at the store and didn’t think it through super thoroughly... In hindsight, I wish I had done semi gloss; it’s very shiny and shows imperfections a lot. Which is probably fine for a diving table when it has yogurt smeared on it half the time anyway. Now I know when it needs to be cleaned. :)

Reassembled the table in place, and put one of the leaves in, which makes it 72" long, the same as our last dining table. (Can you imagine two more leaves in here? Huge! Maybe someday I’ll meet them. They are resting happily in a closet for now.)

So glad I did this project!

Most of the pieces in my dining room are Facebook thrifted/vintage, but linking what I can and similar below, including some similar super affordable vintage rugs from my favorite Etsy shop.