Fixing up a LFS...

Lately I work at a low-budget LFS that is lacking in the physical appearance department-which is the main thing I am trying to help it in. One thing I have been struggling with is removing salt and mineral build-up on the wooden stands (furniture?). I have figured out that with a lot of hard scrubbing (well, what is hard scrubbing for a 16 year old female) I can remove some of the thinner drops of saltwater from the wood, but I'm hopeless to the more generous collections of layers of salt. And I am constantly having to rinse out the cleaning bucket and put fresh water in, since any trace amount of salt from the sponge leaves a white film on the wood from the salt. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get the salt out more easily, other than going over it and over it and over it to hopefully wear it away over time?

Also, once I have that accomplished, some of the main stands/shelves are dull and always dusty looking because they don't have any finish/varnish/whatever. I know absolutely nothing about this... but would it be safe if I attempted to apply a finish to them? Or should I not risk it?

Thanks for any suggestions or advice.

Meh, well there are so many little things about the tanks that bother me, inconsistant gravel and gravel colors (I'm working on the freshwater section right now... removing the bits of mixed color gravels in the tanks that actually have gravel and placing in all the tanks a natural color gravel from Lowes), we're always fighting algae, all the species are sort of mixed up.... it's a pretty shabby looking pet store. The fish are healthy and the owner and employees know a lot (he's fired people for giving misinformation), but it's definately low budget, and I am trying to make it look nicer because it's in a nicer part of town (surprisingly) and a lot of rich folks come in and such. There are only... four employees I think, including the owner and I, and there's usually only one or two people working at a time so they are all kept busy doing the basics (like cleaning out filter media, etc) and talking to the customers, and keeping the shop from falling into total disrepair, but as far as I can tell they haven't had a boost to fix it up in the first place. So I'm just doing little things that hopefully add up... cleaning the shelves (god knows how long it had been since they'd been cleaned), killing cockroaches and escaped crickets...

Once I have the newly obtained secondhand "furniture" cleaned up a bit, there are bits of paint chipped off and I'd like to just bring in a little tube of acrylics and paint over the chipped off paint... I think that would be okay because there are virtually no fumes...

I'm way into this "project" of fixing up the things that nobody else working there has the time to notice... but I'll have to wait until next weekend to continue my salt scraping, because I only work 8 hrs/week on weekends. I just... I know first impressions are important. Maybe people coming in there who know the owner, or who know what they want, wouldn't mind, but otherwise, it gives me negative vibes atleast. I didn't even get to continue the gravel project this weekend because the owner was out all over the state picking up fish. I should take a picture of the shop and get suggestions of how I can fix it up. Little things don't really matter but when there's a lot of them they do, I think.