Refinishing laquered & stained pine - which delta sander?

[TahoeTwoBears]

I'm about to redo our countertops and it's a good time to fix some little blemishes on our pine cabinets. We stained them, but our cabinetmaker friend's finish guy spayed them with a gloss lacquer, not our first choice. Once done, it was too late. We've been living with them successfully for about 10 years, but they've accumulated the little nicks and scratches that time seems to dictate. Now that I'm pulling the countertops, I thought it would be a good time to freshen them up. So the questions...........

1.  Am I crazy to take them all the way back down to raw wood? (Using Festool sanders, of course)
2.  Can I just lightly sand the nicks, etc. out and put another finish over the lacquer (sounds like the easiest of all worlds if it would work)
3.  If sanding's the answer, which delta sander to get? I've already got the ES 125 and the RO 125. I'm assuming that we'd need something to get into the tight bits.

As always, thanks for all of your help and wisdom,

Mike

 

[dirtydeeds]

ttb

a lot of my work is in refurbishment and regularly have to remove 80 to 130 years of paint or varnish back to bare wood. i also polish corian type work surfaces / counter tops

for the flat surfaces i use the rotex 150 (or the 125) with a hard backing pad. the hard backing pad helps reduces "dishing" flat surfaces

in the corners i use the DX93 triangle sander 

the LS130 linear sander is useful in very narrow areas. i made up a couple of the 490 780 backing pads for this

hope this helps

 

[dirtydeeds]

forgot to answer your other question about polishing out the nicks

it is perfectly feasable as long as (stating the obvious) nothing has got in to stain the wood in the dings and scratches or the finish hasnt yellowed over time

in both these cases patch sanding looks poor. for perfection sanding to bare wood is the option