Taking Care Of Oaken Hardwood Garden Furniture
If you are going to acquire garden furniture, it is a good idea to buy the best quality that you can afford and if you have the money then hardwood garden furniture is the best. There are many kinds of hardwood, naturally, but one of the most popular types of hardwood, especially in the UK and northern Europe, is oak. It will withstand any kind of weather and if it is taken care of, it will last for several decades.
Oaken hardwood garden furniture is not cheap to buy, that is true, but if you take into account the joy that oak furniture will give and the fact that it will last for thirty years if you oil it or varnish it once or twice a year, it is pretty cheap certainly.
In contrast, cheap plastic garden furniture may last two or three years, but then it will have to be replaced. So you can sit on plastic chairs and have to replace them every few years or you can buy expensive oak and take pleasure in it for the rest of your life.
Hardwood is heavily sought after, which leads unscrupulous merchants to log it unlawfully. Therefore, if you want to assuage your conscience, try to make sure that you buy your hardwood garden furniture from a renewable source.
What is more, if you buy from a reputable dealer, you will be given directions on how to maintain it, which will enable you to double or even treble its lifespan.
If your oaken hardwood garden furniture is delivered stained or oiled, you should asked the dealer how you should treat the timber. I think that it is better to buy oak furniture oiled or merely stained so that you can make up your own mind how to treat it. Varnished wood has to be varnished again or rubbed down.
If you live in an region where the weather can be severe in the winter or the summer, you could consider getting covers for your furniture, particularly if you know that you are not going to use it for a couple days.
Sunlight is practically as damaging to dead wood as the cold, which is why we stain, varnish, oil and preserve it. Fortunately, this is not an onerous task and a treatment once or twice a year will keep your oaken hardwood garden furniture in tip-top condition for numerous years.
There are numerous different types of wood treatment, so at the end of the day, you should follow the directions on the tin, but I always like to apply a coat of stain without varnish first and maybe even a second one to bring out the patterns in the wood’s grain, then I apply oil, say, linseed oil until the timber is fully protected.
However, take note, this approach can go wrong. The wood can only soak up so much oil so do not put on more than it can soak up otherwise you will not be able to sit on your oaken hardwood garden furniture for a long while.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with large dining tables. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Solid Oak Dining Tables.