Wooden Furniture Attention Basics
With gorgeous natural patterning and numerous shades of colors, wooden furniture is like bringing a small bit of nature into your house. Also, if you pay attention to of your wooden furniture then it can last you for many generations. But there is a price to fork out and that is everyday care and consideration.
Day to Day attention
Every kind of wooden furniture starts with the same rudimentary attention. The most important one is elementary – wood despises humidity. Use a dry smooth cloth or the brush connector on your vacuum and never use a wet cloth. Keep the furniture dry and remove up any droplets or wet areas. Try to avoid locating the furniture in a room where the humidity is too high, too low or the temperature changes too often. Refrain from locating your wooden furniture adjacent to any heating source.
After humidity, the sun is another massive adversary of wood. The sun bleaches wood and can be the cause of color fading. This progress is slow, but virtually lasting. Also, very hot items, like hot cups, lights or candles can cause immediate damage. Try to have to hand some cork mats and try to avoid mats that can ruin the finish such as rubber. Scratches can appear from ornaments so position a mat under them, as well as using them to place under any hot items.
Lets explore the different types of finishes
Different types of wood need specific care so we need to find out what type of finish your furniture has. Generally, we can ascertain three basic sorts of finishing – soft (oiled), hard (polyurethane, varnish, shellac or lacquer) or painted. Whilst painted finishing can be comfortably distinguished, the others are not so easy.
To find out what covering the wood has then in a discreet spot softly rub a small amount of linseed into it. An oiled or soft coating will soak up the linseed. If not, continue with a drop of of acetone. Polyurethane will see acetone run off like water, lacquer like nail varnish dissolves immediately. If you see neither of these responses and the acetone turns tacky then the covering is either a varnish or shellac. Now to work out which of the two finishes it is; place a few drops of alcohol over the area and you will observe that shellac reacts quickly.
Look out for the next article in wood furniture maintenance where we will explore these different types of finishes.
