The Green Room

What can I use to clean outdoor, unfinished teak furniture?
Cris,
Answer
For teak specifically, I’m guessing any tips for wood are going to work. And no worries about the fact that it’s teak. If you take care of it, it will last a long time. I have some sustainable harvest acacia or something from Ikea and we use straight Linseed Oil. First wipe with a cloth (don’t soak) the wood with warm water and the home-made all purpose cleaner (in my recipes) or some castile soap. The Borax in the all purpose cleaner recipe will take care of any mildew.

Another “green” book of mine recommends mixing 4 parts raw linseed oil and 1 part turpentine. Although turpentine often gets a bad wrap, it is from pine trees. Of course things from nature can still have their issues. I bet they use it as a thinner and because it’ll help the linseed penetrate deeper. I’ve been happy with pure linseed oil wiped on with a cloth. You might have to re-apply each season depending on the quality of the wood, how it’s weathered and it’s up keep to date. It might be very thirsty! The biggest caution is all oils are flammable. So no applying near an open flame and carefully dry out the rags before you dispose of them. Again, do all of this outside! I hope that helps.
Lindsay, Queen of Green

Tags: patio furniture, teak

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Green cleaning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.