Guest post by my friend Lydia Thurman

When Tiffany gave me her dining room set, I was thrilled to pieces. I haven’t had any nice looking furniture in my dining room ever in my life. Always been living with hand-me-down beat up rickity furniture that was, in my opinion, an eye sore. So Jack and I drove the truck to the storage unit to load the dining room set onto the trailer to haul it home again. By the time we got home with the furniture Jack was in a foul mood and decided to not unload the furniture right away, even though I told him that the weatherman was calling for heavy rain. I pleaded with him to help me move the furniture into the garage to keep it dry, and we could move it into the house the next day.

Well Jack said that he would cover the furniture with tarps to protect it from getting wet, but that was all he was going to do for the day and that was the end of it. I unloaded the chairs by myself and left Jack to cover the remaining furniture.  I went into the kitchen to start cooking supper, trusting that Jack knew what he was doing. The rain came, as predicted, after dark, and it rained steady and hard for two days. I worried about the furniture, but Jack assured me that the tarp was doing its job and keeping the furniture safe and sound and dry as a bone.

When the rain finally cleared we went out into the driveway to unload the furniture. I was mortified when I realized that instead of a waterproof tarp, Jack had only put a cotton sheet as a drop cloth over the furniture!  You guessed it; the furniture was badly water damaged.

When the table was brought into the dining room, I started to cry. I grabbed a tube of toothpaste and started to rub it into the water stains. That method was useless. So I did a little bit of online research and found a suggestion that I use a cotton pressing cloth and a warm iron to iron out the water stains. Well, it took all day long, but it worked and the table looks great! Thank you, awesome tip sharing people on the Internet! You saved the day!