How to Restore Wood Outdoor Furniture

When it comes to our backyard, these last 3 summers have all had the common theme of “waste not want not”.

If a shabby patio table left by our house’s previous owners needs a good scrubbin’, we scrub it.

If a back porch needs a painted haint blue ceiling to give it Southern charm, we paint it.

If an outdoor space needs a little ambience, we deck it out with $3 ethereal mosquito net curtains and simple string lights and BOOM! Instant magic.

This year, it was our 4 year-old outdoor wooden furniture that needed the rescue mission. So I thought I’d show y’all how we restored it all in a matter of an hour or two, made it look brand new, and saved ourselves hundreds of dollars in case you have some wood furniture needing a little love too.

How to Restore Wood Outdoor Furniture

Supplies Used:

(Some affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here.)

• Teak oil
• Clean, dry rags
• Steam cleaner (*If you have cushions – We used this one.)
• Carpet shampoo (*For cushions)

When we lived at our last house, we got this set of wooden outdoor chairs from World Market for our patio and loved how deep and sturdy they were. (These chairs are comparable to them.) It was definitely one of those quality purchases that we knew could last us a long time if we took good care of it.

But after four years, the wood started looking dry and worn out.

So we just wiped them down with a healthy dose of teak oil and they soaked it right up. We gave all of the screws a quick tightening too.

For the cushions, we fired up the steam cleaner using this carpet cleaner to remove all of the pollen and mildew from the last year. (If you don’t have a steam cleaner though, this solution worked pretty well last summer using mainly common ingredients already in our stash.)

You wouldn’t believe the amount of pollen that ended up in the steam cleaner. It literally turned into pollen paste. Bleck!

So glad we won’t be sitting in that now.

It’s amazing what some good ol’ fashioned elbow grease can do!

I’ll share more of this year’s back porch all gussied up for summer later this week. But this was a tip I couldn’t pass up, in case any of you wanted a way to stretch your existing furniture or found a good Craigslist deal on the used stuff.

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