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I had been on the look out for a vintage marble top coffee table for the longest time but every time one popped up in my Marketplace feed they either had a cracked top or were way out of the price range I was looking for.

This one was listed for $75 and I offered them $60. I always try to negotiate a bit cheaper. You don’t know unless you ask, right? They accepted my offer for $60. The lady was selling her mother’s furniture and knew that the piece was from the 1950-1960’s.

My husband picked it up for me the next day and once we brought it into our house I knew the wood color was not right for my home.

I decided I would start sanding and see how the natural wood tone looked. I removed the decorative flower pieces from the sides using a hammer and a flat head chisel since one of the sides had some cracked pieces.

After first round of sanding and stripping.

I used my orbital sander with 80 grit paper for as much as possible (LINKS to my sanding and stripping favorites). I find sanding to be less time consuming and less messy than stripping an entire piece.

For the detailed pieces on the legs, I applied Citristrip gel with a chip brush and let it sit for about an hour. I then used a wire brush to get into the grooves and crevices.

I scrubbed the remainder of the Citristrip off with some soapy water. As you can see from the above photo, there were still some spots that needed some work. I like to use the sanding attachment on our Dewalt Multitool for detail sanding but any sort of detail sander will get the job done.

A small amount of hand sanding was needed to get to some really hard to reach spots. Folding a piece of sandpaper over something hard but thin, such as this scraper shown or a credit card, works really well.

I then sanded the entire piece with 120 grit and then finished it off with 220 grit to make it nice and smooth. This sanding at the end does not take nearly as long as the first round of sanding when you are removing the old stain and varnish.

I really liked the wood color as is and decided to skip stain and just add a clear top coat.

I had some matte water based polyurethane from a previous project. I tested it out on a small area and found that it did not alter to color of the wood too much.

I applied 2 coats of it using a foam brush. When you first apply it, it will darken the wood quite a bit but it should dry pretty close to the natural color.