Keywords: Outdoor furniture, patio furniture, refinish, repaint, restore
One benefit to living in Greater Phoenix is the fabulous weather we enjoy most of the year. Even during the summer months, many mornings and late evenings are pleasant enough to sit out on the front porch or rear patio. And if you have a swimming pool, it’s all good!
A key factor to enjoying outdoor living is lawn and patio furniture. The range in quality of outdoor furniture goes from the humble to the sublime. I grew up with folding aluminum lawn chairs. The cupholder is a more recent feature. These are $36 each on Amazon. That is much more expensive than my childhood. But at today’s prices, that’s practically disposable. If you get a few years before the webbing deteriorates, you got your money’s worth.
The resin chairs have been around for quite a while. The styles vary from the original stacking chairs to Adirondacks, lounge chairs and rockers. The price range on Amazon is $34 on the low end to as high as $168. Direct sunlight will dry out the resin after several years, making it brittle and unsafe. If used under cover of a patio roof, it will last much longer.
Several species of wood are used in many styles of outdoor tables, chairs and benches. Similar to resin furniture, wood lasts much longer out of the weather. Rain and sun are hard on wood. If exposed to the elements, you will need considerable maintenance to preserve the wood.
There is a wide variety of aluminum and wrought iron chairs. Some have cloth seatbacks and seats, or cloth covered pads and cushions. Others are simply painted metal. The price range on metal furniture goes from $50 per chair to “the sky’s the limit”.
The most durable outdoor furniture is thermoplastic coated steel furniture and concrete furniture. Both of these categories are relatively expensive to purchase. But they hold up without maintenance for many years. They’re most commonly found in public places such as schools, parks, and office complexes. A concrete picnic table with concrete benches will last a lifetime. It’s practically indestructible.
Reviving Weathered Furniture
The remainder of this article is about restoring wood and metal furniture. Perhaps you invested a good sum of money in a wood or metal patio furniture set several years ago. Now, the wood is looking dried out and the varnish has failed. Or your metal has peeling paint and is rusting. Is it time to toss it and start over with new furniture? Maybe it is time. But maybe your furniture can be salvaged. How can you tell?
Grab your sander, pick a prominent spot, and start sanding. If you can quickly sand through the aged surface to expose fresh wood grain, your furniture is a candidate for refinishing, that is, if the wood is otherwise sound with no badly broken pieces. Regarding metal furniture, if there are no places that have completely rusted through, making the furniture unsafe, you can probably restore it.
Refinishing Wood Furniture
Proper preparation is essential for a lasting result. Follow these steps:
- Clean the wood with a good detergent. Remove dirt, grease and other foreign matter.
- If there are holes, gouges or deep scratches, fill them with wood putty.
- When repainting, be careful to scrape any loose paint. It is not necessary to remove old paint that is still binding to the wood.
- Sand thoroughly. If repainting, only sand until paint is scuffed up. This will provide an improved surface for the new paint to bond to. If re-staining or oiling, sand until wood is uniform in appearance.
- Wipe off sanding dust.
- Lead-based paint prep. If your furniture is very old, you might have to deal with lead-based paint.
We recommend urethane alkyd enamel paint for painted outdoor furniture. Ask for it at any store that sells paint.
We like a semi-transparent exterior wood stain for stained wood furniture. This is the same product used for decks and wood gates. We don’t like polyurethane clear coats on outdoor furniture because they fail too quickly.
For an oil finish, we like Penofin Deep Penetrating Oil Treatment for Exotic Hardwood Exterior Wood. Maricopa County has restricted paint stores from selling oil-based products with high VOC values. Penofin oil products are considered wood working products, rather than paint products. It is made from the oil of the Brazilian Rosewood Tree. Penofin is available from Amazon.
If your furniture has an exterior wood stain or an oil finish, expect to recoat it every few years.
Restoring Metal Furniture
Painted metal furniture fails in three common ways. The paint can get chalky, it can peel, and areas can rust, particularly the feet. As with all painting, the preparation is critical. Follow these steps:
- Clean the metal with a good detergent. Remove dirt, grease and other foreign matter.
- Scrape all loose or peeling paint. Scrape and wire brush rusted areas. Remove as much rust as is feasible.
- Weld any joints and parts that have come loose.
- File or grind down any sharp points or edges.
- Wipe off any paint or metal dust
Metal furniture typically cannot be painted with a paint brush. The paint should be sprayed on. If you don’t have a paint sprayer, buy enough spray paint cans for the job. If you are covering rusted areas, a product like Rust Oleum makes sense. Otherwise, any quality spray paint will do.
If you do have a paint sprayer, we recommend urethane alkyd enamel for a DIY homeowner. It will give you at least twice the life of quality spray paint cans.
A superior product is a two-component paint. It will give you at least four times the life of a quality can of spray paint. However, this is a product that is hard to find and a challenge to apply for an inexperienced painter.
Refinishing or repainting your outdoor furniture is a manageable project for many homeowners. But if it’s more than you want to take on yourself, contact us. If we can get your furniture into our professional spray room, we can restore it to a nearly new appearance, using the best techniques and coatings. The cost of professional refinishing is a fraction of the cost of new furniture.
