Best Treatments for Outdoor Wood Furniture

Outdoor wood furniture can make a beautiful addition to any home. It is attractive, sturdy and adds a great deal of functionality to your garden or patio. However, it can be expensive and demanding to maintain. Outdoor wood furniture needs to be treated and maintained on a regular basis. This kind of furniture can last many years if it is properly maintained and cared for. However, it can steadily degrade if it is not maintained properly. Even after a year, it can begin to deteriorate and look scruffy and even start to fall apart or rot. Maintaining your furniture is something you should do on a regular basis to make sure it never gets to this stage.

Step 1 - General Maintenance

When your furniture is not being used, it should always be covered. A few rain showers won’t do any harm to it, but if you are not in the habit of covering your furniture on a regular basis, it will degrade much faster. Placing covers on the furniture should only take a few minutes after using it. It will make an enormous difference, however, as it will not only protect the furniture from bad weather, but also from the sun itself. It will also save you a lot of work in the future, as you will not have to treat the wood so frequently.

Step 2 - Clean the Furniture

Several times per year, the furniture should be thoroughly cleaned. There are products made specifically for cleaning outdoor wood furniture. You can hose it down to begin with, removing any debris or cobwebs. Then, use the furniture cleaner as directed on the packaging.

Step 3 - Treat the Wood

Treating the word is something you will also need to do on a fairly regular basis. You will need to do this a lot less frequently if you keep your furniture covered up and clean it regularly, however. Generally, you should treat the wood once every year or two. All of the furniture should be sanded back and the surfaces prepared properly for applying a new layer of stain. The stain will help to protect the furniture from the sun and from the weather.

The furniture should also be oiled three to four times every year. The wood should be saturated with the furniture oil and it needs to have time to soak in. This also protects the wood. Before oiling the surface, make sure it is thoroughly clean. This job should not take long as you should only need to put one coat on providing you do it on a regular basis.

Other Things to Consider

A few other things to consider with regards to maintaining your outdoor furniture is to make sure any screws that have come loose are tightened again. There may be some other basic repairs to make including replacing slats on wooden chairs. You should also check for any rotten wood. If there is any rotten wood in a piece of furniture, it will likely need replacing as it may not be practical to repair it.