Refinishing/painting a Table

I did this recently with my kitchen table. It had been a dark wood, and I wanted to paint it and use it as a craft table. I sanded it down, primed it, and painted it. I will say that this is a much easier project if you have a paint sprayer (we have an airless sprayer, which gives a very smooth, perfect finish). If you don't own a paint sprayer, you can rent one. I did several coats of the color, waiting for it to dry and then sanding with a very fine sandpaper in between coats. When the final color coat was dry, I did a clear polyurethane coat on top. It has held up really well - my kids do all kinds of crafts on it and it gets scrubbed every day.

The last time we refinished something we just sanded down to raw wood. It took a lot of sandpaper in various grits (rough to get off the initial layer and subsequently finer to smooth the surface) and lots of time. We used a small orbital sander and that made quick work of the process in general. For the really small detail areas we sanded by hand or with an improvised implement (taping sandpaper to the end of a toothbrush for instance). After we finished sanding, we wiped the whole piece with cheese cloth, applied a coat of surface prep, applied however many layers of stain for the desired color and sealed at the end (the piece was small so we used a spray polyurethane). The sanding was a simple alternative to using a liquid or gel stripper. We did the project in the spring so we were able to be outside the whole time so ventilation was not an issue. Good luck.

I'd try to sand it and see what happens.

There are places that will "dip" it for you.

Otherwise, I'd scuff it up with sandpaper, get the old stain completely off, then re-stain.

I refinished my old kitchen table, but it wasn't taking stain the way I wanted it to so I painted it and then applied 5+ coats of poly to the top. It never did chip and we used it daily for 5 years.

I refinished my mother's table many years ago. I used a product that removed the old finish at the same time it stained it. The original finish was shiny.i just rubbed the product on with cheese cloth. There were a couple of steps. The results were beautiful. Ask at a paint store or in the department of a general store. I think the product was from Minwax or something like that.