Mayonnaise to the rescue

With the move my pot plants were neglected in the confusion and suffered a little.  And got shoved in the strangest places for safekeeping.

One of which was on our coffee table which was hiding in a corner away from falling bricks and potential builder's damage.  But, I have to say that the pot plant didn't suffer as much as the table did.

Water marks on our poor coffee table
from an over-watered pot plant

I have heard, and read, that one can rescue a piece of furniture with a watermark using mayonnaise.

I like the thought of this succeeding - I'd prefer to try this eco-friendlier method than some chemical laced solution.

Mayo to the rescue?

So I had to try it.  The first time I smeared it over, left it for a couple of hours, and then battled to get it off.  "Lucky I did it now", I thought, "imagine if I'd left it on for longer."  But I wasn't happy with the result.  What's all the fuss about - this isn't so impressive?

But, I don't give up easily, and the table kept shoving itself into my face.  So, a couple of days later I smeared some more mayo on the table - a generous amount this time.  And I walked away from it.

I left the mayo on the table overnight and this is
what it looked like the next morning

The next morning the mayo had gone all clear and the table looked better.  The dark outerr ring is what I think could be minute grains of soil which found their way into the swollen wood.  The clear coloured mayo was much easier to remove too.  Yay!

The centre water mark is almost invisible - far
more so in real life than it appears in this pic,
but the outer mark clearly still has an outline -
probably as a result of the "muddy" water
oozing into the swollen wet wood.  All
the other marks have disappeared :)

This is what it looks like now.  The water marks in the centre, and in odd spots round the table are gone and the main one on the edge will probably get another dose of mayo before I call it a day.  But there is a definite improvement, don't you think?

If the outer one is still visible then I'm going to call in RMan with his orbital sander and some very fine sand paper.  At least I'll know that the table has had some treatment prior to being sanded down a little...