I must share this little secret. While I’m all for hiring a professional when necessary (i.e. reupholstery, furniture refinishing, electricians, etc.); however, when it comes to those nasty white heat stains on wood furniture you can fix this  yourself. I did it, with fantastic results. Click here for step by step instructions on how to remove white heat stains from furniture.

Warning: Make sure to read the instructions carefully – and the comments – before proceeding, especially if your table (or other piece of furniture) is not solid wood. The comment below was particularly helpful. Best of luck!

Bonnie

Marcus DiMarco says:

The hot iron with steam on a towel takes practice. If you leave the hot water from the towel (really what you are doing is making a hot damp towel to fix the table) on the table for too long you will make a bigger white mark. Not to worry you can fix it .
The right way to do it is to tune the amount of steam to how thick your towel is. It is better to use a thicker rather than thinner towel. The thicker the towel the more pumps of steam you will need, but it will also give you a broader and more homogenous result. A thinner towel will only fix the small area where the steam jets are. I got best results with a white dish towel folded up twice so 4x thickness.

So for each thickness you use, use that many pumps of steam max. So for the 4x thickness use 2-4 pumps of steam, then swipe the towel off the area quickly. What you are doing is swiping a hot damp towel over the area, that is how you fix the table. Once you get it as good as you can (which using my method, almost unnoticable) finish by rubbing in a few drops of olive oil and it will look good as new.

This method was done on a modern light colored wood table, I think the wood is particleboard with veneer. And whatever the modern cheap clearcoat is.