Recap: My Most Popular Post Ever- How to Remove Water Stains from Wood

Hey all!  Welcome to Trashtastic Tuesday!  This is a little series around here where I show you something that I thrifted, sometimes I make it over, sometimes I don’t.  Or it may be something that I have owned and I am tired of, or no longer like, so I make it over.  But nevertheless, it is usually something that I paid very little money for.  Today, I thought I would reshare my most popular post I have ever written on my blog, how to remove water stains from wood.   Since I have gained many new followers in the past year, some of you may not have seen this before, so it is worth sharing again, because it really works!  It still continues to get hits and repins on a daily basis, and it was even featured on Buzzfeed as part of a round up of 31 ways to clean all of the stubbornly dirty things. That was a huge moment for me as a blogger, and that post continues to bring traffic to my blog!  When I wrote this post, I had no idea it would be the most popular post I have written, funny how you can’t predict these things.  I have written so many posts in the past almost three years, and who would have guessed this particular one would be so well received?  But, I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll take it!  I changed up the pictures a little to update this post, but the content is the same.

Today I want to show you a great tip that I found recently for removing water marks on wood furniture.  I purchased this side table over a year ago for $5 at The Mission.  I really liked the modern lines.  And it has some really pretty inlay on the top.  It is also very sturdy solid wood.

I bought it to use in our family room, and have been using it, water stains an all.  But a couple of weeks ago, I was spring cleaning in the family room, and I decided it was time to tackle this table.  This is the table when I took a picture of it in the store.

 

I searched around and found a solution.

Mix the olive oil and the salt in a bowl to make a thick paste.  The salt draws out the moisture, and the olive oil feeds the wood.  And it is magical.  Then, simply rub the paste onto the damaged area.  I made mine pretty thick, and just sat it on the areas where I had damage.  Leave sit for approximately :30 minutes, and wipe all excess paste off of furniture.  All of the stains will magically be gone!

Update 6/18/15:  Here are some pictures of the olive oil and salt paste.  I had a reader on my Facebook page request to see pictures, and well, why didn’t I think of that?  I did not measure this.  But in the first picture you can see that I poured a pile of salt in a small bowl, and then I poured a small amount of olive oil over it.  I start with the salt, and just keep adding olive oil little by little until it is a thick paste.  if it ends up being too thin, just add some more salt until it is the right consistency.

This is the mixture after I stirred it.

And I tried to get a couple of shots of it as I was pouring it out of the spoon, so that you can really see the consistency.

It kind of looks like applesauce, don’t you think?  Just smear it all over your piece of furniture using a paper towel, let it sit for about :30 minutes, and then clean it all off!  I have had two people make comments since I wrote this post that it didn’t work for them.  I am not really sure why it didn’t work for them, maybe it has something to do with the type of wood.  But the overall majority of people say it worked great, and you can clearly see that it worked like a charm on my table.  I hope it works for you!  I would love for you to leave a comment at the end of this post and tell me the results you got!

Look at the results!  I took pictures from a few different angles for you to see that the stains are virtually gone.

 

 

Some changed have taken place in this room since I wrote this post almost a year ago, here are a couple of shots of how things look now.  You can read the full posts and see more updated pictures of our family room here and here.