Looking after Wooden Furniture and the Rudimentary Attention Needed

With pretty natural patterning and numerous shades of colors, wooden furniture is like bringing a little bit of nature into your home. Moreover, if you pay attention to of your wooden furniture then it can last you for many lifetimes. But there is a price to pay and that is general care and diligence.

Day to Day care

To start off with we must look at the basics that apply to all types of wooden furniture. Let’s start by making it perfectly clear that wood and humidity do NOT like each other. As a result, don’t use wet rags for cleaning, instead use a soft cloth or vacuum cleaner with a brush attachment. Immediately dry all spills and do whatever is needed to keep the furniture dry. Put furniture in a room with a consistent temperature, thus avoiding temperature and humidity extremes. Shy away from locating your wooden furniture alongside to any heating source.

Move furniture away from the sun as it can harm the wood. Color fading in wood is normally induced by exposure to uninterrupted sunlight. Irreversible damage can be caused over a period of time. Avoid resting hot objects on wood, such as coffee cups, candles and other such items as this can damage the wood straightaway. Having wooden furniture in a room requires keeping a set of mats at hand as a first choice they should be made of cork, because plastic or rubber mats can soften and damage the finish). With these mats you can safeguard the surface of the wood when positioning items on it such as hot cups and heavy objects.

Different types of wood finishes

After the general care we need to look at more definitive care for each type of wood veneer. Generally, we can ascertain three basic types of finishing – soft (oiled), hard (polyurethane, varnish, shellac or lacquer) or painted. By far the easiest to spot is painted wood, but you will need to look at little closer to find out the finish of the other types of wood.

Happily, there is a simple test to help you: Gently rub few drops of linseed into the surface (naturally, choose some discreet spot). An oiled or soft veneer will absorb the linseed. Acetone should be tried next if the linseed is not absorbed. Polyurethane will see acetone run off like water, lacquer like nail varnish dissolves immediately. If the coating turns tacky then you can ascertain it is a varnish or shellac. Now to determine which of the two finishes it is; put a few drops of alcohol over the area and you will observe that shellac reacts quickly.

Look out for the coming article in wood furniture maintenance where we will explore these different types of finishes.