It is inevitable; you will put a scratch in almost any wood surface in your home eventually, especially if it is a horizontal surface like a dining table or cocktail table. When the first one happens, you will freak out, maybe curse a little and then start to notice all of the little scratches that have been there forever but never saw before.  Before I continue, I will give you a moment to get up and inspect your own furnishings to see all the small surface scratches.

OK great. Now that you are back I am going to tell you a story about a cocktail table, a boy and a statue.

It all began one morning way back in April.  I woke up, drank my morning cup of coffee in the living room and checked my facebook notifications before heading off to work. Work went by quickly and uneventful.  I was anxious to get back home and eat dinner on top of my cocktail table as I do most evenings.

When I arrived home, I was confused to see the large candle turned upside down that normally sits atop of a stack of books on my cocktail table.  I assumed someone had moved it off to make a bit more room on the table and just forgot to put it back correctly. As I made my way around to the other side to sit on my comfortable brown and black striped sectional, my confusion turned into horror.  Before me was a deep gouge in the cocktail table about 9 to 10 inches long.  It lead from under the 20 pound concrete Buddha statue to the edge of the table. There it was; the grain of the dark-brown stained, quarter-sew oak, stripped away, exposing the natural color underneath.  The scratch twisted though my cocktail table like a deep set wrinkle in Laura Bush’s face.

I quickly texted my roommate to share my discovery only to find out that my table was involved in a mid-afternoon collision with a 5’9 Hispanic male, AKA my roommate.  Luckily, having a background in design, I knew that the $1,200 table was not ruined; it could be fixed.

The first option was Murphy’s oil infused furniture stain.  While this may cover surface scratches, this quick fix will just flow down the gouge like water in a river and seep into the pours of the wood to never be seen again.  Then I thought that a furniture stain marker would do the trick.  It’s a little more heavy duty and would be permanent.  The only problem is, quarter sew oak has a very specific grain pattern and the scratch would change from a natural color blemish to a mud color disgrace.

The only solution for this conundrum was to send off the 150 pound table to a wood finisher and have the whole thing resurfaced.  Easy said and done right?  Wrong.  My cocktail table is still sitting in my living room, on the verge of death due to this mid-afternoon domestic dispute.

You may be wondering why, almost 4 months later, is it still not fixed.  Is it due to laziness?  Nope.  Too heavy to get there?  Not really.  Is it expensive?  Yup!  A scratch can be fixed, but you better be willing to pay the price if you want it done correct or punish your friend by writing an article about it so they remember the pain they have caused that poor, helpless little cocktail table.