Pine

This coffee table was re-finished by yours truly. You too could have such a table by following the instructions below.

1. Buy your wife a coffee table from Pottery Barn (this was before my "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is" resolution to stop buying crap I know is evil) but realize when it arrives that the finish and quality sucks. Vow to never buy anything from Pottery Barn again. Succeed.
2. Only halfheartedly complain when your wife leaves tissue soaked in nail polish remover sitting on the coffee table, further ruining the cheap finish. Only halfheartedly attempt to fix it with some weird stain-crayon thing. Ignore the blemish for years.
   
3. Finally come up with a plan for the coffee table. Using your new sander, remove all of the finish from the top of the table.
   
4. Draw an outline of a tree on the table in pencil after much online research on what the tree should look like. It's a redwood, by the by.
   
5. Ignore the unfinished wood with a tree drawn on it for another few months. Remember to constantly harass your wife about using a coaster because if anything should stain the wood in its unfinished state, it will wreck it. Give her looks when your father-in-law does not use a coaster with his red wine. This look should say "I don't care how you do it, but get a goddamn coaster under that red wine before the small vein in my forehead explodes, which would suck because then blood would never wash off the table."
6. Get your teeny-tiny paint brush out and fill in the outline of the tree using flat black paint. Finish with coat upon coat of polyurethane in a satin finish.
   
7. Enjoy!