So, you have this beautiful garden? Keep it beautiful by properly maintaining your wooden outdoor patio and dining furniture. The reason for this is that if the one element looks scrappy, you will find that most of the others also look that way too. The good news though is that doing maintenance on your wooden outdoor furniture is actually not that difficult. There will be the occasional need for heavy lifting, especially during the rainy season, but beyond that, you will see that not only does it turn into a labour of love, but it also a great way to spend some time outdoors.
Before you have furniture to maintain, you should make sure that you choose the right type of wood to have outdoors. You want to choose a wood that is naturally very hardy and resilient, something like teak, oak, cedar or acacia. These woods will survive extreme weather conditions with minimal damage making your life a lot easier indeed.
Things to look out for when doing maintenance
First off, the one thing that you need to do when you have wooden furniture is to make sure that you know when maintenance is needed. You don’t want to let a small splinter become a big issue because you overlooked it.
The golden rule for maintaining wood furniture is to make sure that you sand down and re-varnish it whenever you see the first signs of splintering. Splintering can lead to excessive cracking and eventual splitting of the wood, which is, of course, harmful to the furniture. Make sure that if you have encountered a crack, you varnish into it, just so that it doesn’t develop rot from the rain and other elements such as wood beetles.
If you have very harsh weather climates, you should ideally try and put your furniture underneath some sort of covering unless it is in use. For instance, if you live in a place with heavy storms in the afternoon and scorching sun during the morning, this is likely to weather your wood faster, so rather just put it away.
You will also most likely need to oil your wood furniture every now and again as well, just to give it an extra layer of waxy protection against the elements. This also keeps your wood nice and soft to the touch. After all, there is nothing worse than sitting on dry wood that feels as though it could splinter at any moment.
One of the best pieces of outdoor wood furniture is, without doubt, the built in braai. The centre of the furniture is a built in braai that can be detached and used as storage space or a cooler box. The outside is a mixture of pine wood and metal. This is a great way to entertain. You can braai while your guests sit right there, enjoy some drinks and relax outside.