Hi, trailrunner! You've got so many responses already, I don't know if this has already been said. I just wanted to say that you may want to get a second opinion about removing your large trees if you already have drainage problems. We're suddenly having MAJOR drainage problems on our lot because of the recent removal of many mature pines. We had a landscaper build us a retaining wall to help re-route the storm water, but all that's done so far is to retain the water a few feet farther from the house than it was. Whereas previously the water had been absorbed by the big trees, now nothing is absorbing it. My husband has been digging and installing hundreds of feet of French drains for weeks now and they seem to help some, but the water problem isn't entirely gone. Our next step is going to be installing a pond to contain some of the stormwater, and a rain garden to catch the rest. I really encourage you to look into rain gardens. In our research, we've learned that stormwater run-off, in addition to making your backyard an unpleasant place to be, is becoming an environmental issue, at least around here where residential growth is rampant. It's much better for this water to percolate through some soil and plants BEFORE it gets to streams and lakes. A rain garden is a nice solution and there are a fair number of plants out there that tolerate both dry and damp conditions. Good luck! Bad drainage is NO fun in the mosquito-infested South!

Don't feel bad. What you're trying to do does require a lot of finesse and without the experience it's a learning process for sure. If you can figure it out you'll definitely save some money. It's especially fun when you can go to a second hand store and find a great piece of furniture that's cheap and unwanted because the finish is in bad shape. Okay, so you're at the point of over sanding and cutting into the underlying stain. I'm assuming the color is different and it's not just the white haze caused by sanding on varnish? It's probably still possible to blend the lighter spots back in but I'm not sure you'd want to purchase the supplies to try the techniques out. I sometimes use touch up markers from a commercial finish supplier or raw pigments and dyes mixed with thinned shellac. You'd have to invest $50+ in supplies to attempt a technique that is difficult even for a pro and may fail and the supplies will likely go to waste afterwards. Now if I were working on that table, I'm guessing I'd be swinging into full strip and refinish mode. The reason is that you say your husband's poly is cloudy in spots. If that was there before you started sanding then it could be water damage. Otherwise, it's almost certainly an indication that the finish has separated from the surface below. Trying to finish over the top of that would be a waste of time. No, you don't have to sand all the finish off. It's also really difficult to sand off an old finish and end up with nice, even coloring afterwards. Using chemical strippers is a lot easier but also a little intimidating if you've not done it before. For starters, you need to do it outside because you don't have the equipment to ventilate the fumes. Secondly, you'll need to invest in $30 of gloves, scrapers, brushes and other supplies if you don't have them already. This will also remove most of the stain and require matching the new finish to the chairs. Your best bet is to first see if there's a reputable shop in your area that is setup with a flow-over strip system, outsource the stripping but do the refinish yourself. Chances are, it'll cost you almost as much to get supplies to get started with the chemicals as it will to pay a professional to do that part. If you do that job yourself, you'll need plastic drop cloth, heavy nitrile or neoprene gloves (probably multiple pairs unless you find the good ones), some scrub brushes, plastic putty knives and half a dozen pieces of Scotch Brite. That's in addition to the stripper and the solvent required to wash away the residue. I use methylene chloride stripper but it's potent stuff. Breathing it is bad and it will burn skin within seconds of contact. Plenty of ventilation is a must when using that and since some companies add flammable solvent to the mix, explosion-proof ventilation is a must. That means work outdoors or own professional finishing equipment. The citrus-based and soy based strippers work fine but are slower and in my experience, more expensive. 3M Safest Stripper is very slow but effective when used properly and can be used indoors. Downsides are water content will make the wood moist and it was more expensive than the others the last time I checked. If after reading that, you prefer the hard, dusty work of sanding, then my approach would be to get good coated (minimizes clogging) sandpaper from an automotive finish supplier and start with 80 grit on flat surfaces. Don't bear down on the paper, just use even, smooth strokes and let the paper do the cutting. Stop using the 80 as soon as the wood starts showing through and move to 100 to get most of the remainder off. 120 is good for cleaning off the last residue and you can jump to 220 to prepare for stain. Always sand with the grain of the wood. For profiles and other details, I'd not start below 150 grit. Be careful sanding on that top though. It may be a thin veneer so avoid removing any wood. and that's another reason I use chemicals instead of sandpaper.

Hi - it's a Juniper, not a pine - everything with needles is not pine :-) and for that matter all evergreens don't have needles, but it's a common mistake. Which juniper (there are many) I'm not sure, but for now it's not important as care info would be the same. The very first thing I'd suggest is to let most of the soil dry between waterings as they don't like wet feet, but unfortunately you can't know how it was watered (in e.g. Wal-Mart?) before you got it and so many of these mass produced juns are watered like house plants by people who only know how to use a cash register. And very often the trees will look fine for even weeks but have already begun to die off - very rigid (and crumbly) foliage is a sign, so is yellowing and a lot of brown - not the small amount of reddish brown near the bottom - that's old growth being shed annually - but all over brown. SO, presuming it's still ok (I'm not normally pessimistic, but these things are an old sad story), give it as much bright light all day as possible. And while you wait, go directly to e.g. Bonsai4me.com and read up on general juniper care as I'm not going to say more for the moment. Do not randomly prune off anything as you probably won't yet understand why, how or what to prune, but finding a local bonsai club would be terrific because they can show you how to repot properly and into what kind of mix, whether and how to prune roots, etc. and how to keep it alive in future. There's an absolute ton of info on juniper bonsai out there, but stick to immediate basics for now... forget the 'bonsai' thing til you have some idea about ongoing care.

You are training them well! Your comment about the hampers is correct. I end up having to collect clothes from their rooms. My 15yo daughter is the worst. I have to avoid her room if I don't want to ruin my day, and her clothes are the deplorable. The underwear, the deodorant stains, and she is the brute on the soccer fields, her uniforms are always stained up. She is a lost cause for now. I can just see your little guy sorting his clothes. ..I think I still have some time with my boys to get a few lessons in, after I learn them myself. I have been washing my clothes since I was 12, but I never learned how to properly do laundry, even in Home Ec.