It’s amazing what the elements can do to some nice outdoor patio chairs and a picnic table with an umbrella. Cold air does some serious damage to those “all weather” cushions. Most of them are plastic, which acts almost like a mold attractor, or maybe a moss-algae attractor, in any way, sometime in the Spring, when the snows have thawed (even now when we’re able to essentially count the number of times it actually finally did snow), we constantly find ourselves buying new cushions or a complete new set. It’s amazing how the metal can rust, or bind from corrosion, we had one of these patio umbrellas above one of the tables, that had a crank to open and close it, boy, only after 1 year of keeping this outside, even though it was closed, it literally started snapping its own arms that fold out the umbrella. I think the metal really became weak from the cold and warm temperature fluctuations.
Sometimes it was just rivets that popped off, which made you think, hmm, maybe I can fix that with a bolt or something, but once one goes, they all start to go eventually, it seems like patio furniture, at least the stuff that was on sale, really isn’t made to withstand the weather (at least Massachusetts weather). When we did try and clean some of the “green stuff” off our cushions or umbrella, we used some baking soda-type powder with soap water, a light abrasive like a green scrubby sponge helps, and they looked OK for a little while, but soon it’s hard to hide the fact that they’re old, and when we decided to throw a little party with some coworkers, well we knew it was time to spend the $30 for new cushions.
Too bad a replacement umbrella isn’t as easy to find! So what is a realistic method to add a little life to your deck chairs and table? I guess one thing to do is when the time comes when you’re no longer inclined to sit outside (for the cold), pack the cushions up and put them in the garage, also it’s worth doing that with the umbrella. Anywhere where they won’t get snowed on, will undoubtedly make things easier in the spring. We had no space to park the chairs and table, but in the spring I did decided to take a little sandpaper and sand off some of the rust that was starting to creep on some of the legs, and just give them a little coat of white anti-rust paint. The table with the umbrella had a frosted glass tabletop, which worked ok to push the glass out from the table and lean it up against a wall and give it a nice scrub, before drying it and doing a cleaning with glass cleaner and paper towels.
The trick is to make a little effort to do a good cleaning, and those little places where there’s dirt won’t bother you so much when July 4th comes around. But in the end, buying new garden furniture every few years is just the nature of the situation!
Tags: Patio Furniture