Teak Outdoor Furniture

As you may already know, teak wood is one of the finest, richest and most durable materials for outdoor furniture. Teak is not only weather resistant; it is also insect resistant and can last for generations! Teak is my choice for outdoor furniture because of look, quality and durability.

Although teak wood is the brawn among all furniture material, it still needs to be cleaned and maintained so that you can stretch the life of your teak furniture for as long as possible. Using proper techniques to clean, maintain, restore, preserve and enhance teak is pretty easy and will not take up too much of your time. In fact, because teak is a low maintenance type of wood, you should only need to do a single round of cleaning on your teak furniture (outdoors and indoors) once a year.

Over time, teak's rich yellow-brown hue will turn slightly silvery or grayish. Sometimes, outdoor teak furniture might even develop some tiny hairline cracks on the surface. Teak may be strong, but they are not immune to surface erosion, discoloration, mildew, graying, roughness or cracking. The environmental conditions where your teak is located will certainly be a factor in the maintenance requirements of your furniture.

If you want to extend the life of your Teak furniture, it is important to understand how to properly care and maintain your wood. Here are some cleaning suggestions that should help you in your maintenance program.

How to go about cleaning teak furniture (and Teak on Boats)
First, you will want to wash the teak furniture well to remove any dirt and build-up. You can certainly find specialty teak cleaners in your local hardware store, or you can even use a strong detergent. I've used all types of teak cleaners, and have spent countless hours scrubbing the teak with special brushes and pads. The cheapest and easiest way that I have found to clean teak is to use a product called TSP (Tri-Sodium Phosphate). It's a dry product that you can get at most Home Improvement stores, like Lowes and Home Depot.

If you use the TSP, you'll need a bucket, a stiff scrub-brush, and perhaps some rubber gloves. The TSP will be mixed with water, so you really won't need anything else. I've cleaned so much Teak that I can easily gauge the amount of TSP to add to water (depending on the severity of the cleaning job). As you start out, you'll want to follow the instructions on the box when determining the amount of TSP per gallon of water, and probably experiment on a small