I thought I would answer the age old question, “Does mayonnaise remove white rings from furniture?” because remember that beautifully waxed coffee table I sanded…?
I remember writing that post,and thinking, there is no way that table is going to survive my three children. It’s like I’m psychic. So, after a few weeks of watching the damage occur, and lots of yelling, I gave up, and we swapped it out for our hairpin table, and brought my beautiful wood table upstairs to where the more civilized people are.
Then, I was faced with trying to figure out how not to re-wax the entire tabletop. Some cold, wet glasses of who knows what, left nice, white rings on my waxed top. I reached way back into my childhood and remembered having to use mayonnaise on my mom’s wood tables to get white rings off after parties. This was back when everyone used Pledge and there were about 17 layers of waxy finish built up.
So unlike my Mother’s, where I cracked open a jar of bacon-ready, $2.99 Helmann’s, and slopped it on, I scooped out some fat-free, olive oil-based, organic,low-sodium, cholesterol-free spread, and only used enough just to do the job, because that jar cost like $80.
I spread it over the stain, thought about making bacon, and let it sit for an hour. Some sites said overnight, but that seemed like over-kill to me, plus, old mayo smells gross. And I really wanted to make bacon.
After wiping it clean, I saw it did remove the white ring, but there was still a very faint mark. After some searching, I found if it has soakedinto the wood, only sanding can remove it (insert red, faced,angry emoji), or I can try to re-wax it (insert second red-faced angry emoji).
So either way, while it does work, it doesn’t completely remove the water stains.This is the one downfall with waxed surfaces, which I talk about the difference between the finishes in this post between using wax and polyacrylic to finish a tabletop. I knew that risk when I was waxing this top, but to be honest, I thought I would at least get a few months out of it. I have to admit, they work fast. So mayonnaise can remove water stains, and white rings from furniture, but it’s not a perfect fix, but it does make them less noticeable, so there’s that.
Do you have any life hacks for getting the water rings off of furniture? Those used to be called old wives tales, but I guess life hack is the PC version. 🙂
Jen, I’ve used lemon oil (Holloway House) on water rings and it usually does the trick. Hope you find something that works.
Thanks! I will try that. I love lemon scent too!
I remember Rachel Ashwell in her first Shabby Chic book talking about removing white rings off furniture by rubbing cigarette ash into them. Don’t know if it works {I have asthma anyway so… no can do for me!} but if you have no allergies to that, you might try it.
Hope your table gets a little more wear before you resand it. 🙂
Barb 🙂