Patio Furniture – Spring Cleaning Is Easy For Your Deck Too

By Jesse Akre

Ready to reclaim your backyard? Now that the cold weather is moving out, it’s time to clean up what old man winter has left behind on your deck and prepare your patio furniture for spring.

Spring cleaning for the deck has a number of levels.

First, start by cleaning your deck. Chances are its gotten dirty and may have even taken a little damage from the cold weather. This is a great time to give it a deep cleaning. The more dirt and debris you remove from the deck, the more easily you will be able to see if there are any cracks or other areas of damage in the deck that need to be repaired.

Once you’ve checked out the deck for damage, and you are secure with it being in good condition, it’s time to protect it for the next year. Depending on what kind of decking you have, there are many options for protecting it. If you still have the instructions from your original decking purchase, there may be details on how to protect it from the elements. Sometimes these treatments will last for years; sometimes they have to be repeated annually. Spring is a great time to go through these steps.

Once you have finished cleaning the deck and protecting it, it’s time to focus on your patio furniture. Patio furniture also needs a good cleaning. From top to bottom, you should wash your patio furniture. For plastic and poly patio furniture, this may be as easy as turning on the garden hose or using a pressure washer to rinse all the patio furniture pieces off. If you have wicker, teak or other wood-based patio furniture pieces, these may take a little more work. Pressure washers could damage the wood and cause scratches that take away from the attractive surface. Instead, you will need to put a little elbow-grease into the cleaning of these items. Get down with a brush and warm soapy water and work all the dirt and debris out of the patio furniture. Do not use a wire scrub brush. While many think wire brushes are a better way to get rid of all the dirt and debris, the truth is, those wire brushes can not only cause grooves in your furniture but also leave behind more debris.

When the wire brush is used on a wood surface, it may well cut into the wood. Then pieces of the wire brush can break off into the new cuts in the wood. Those pieces of wire are not only stuck in the wood, but often rust and break down inside the wood doing more damage to the structure.

Getting your deck and patio furniture ready for the entertaining season is something that you should make part of your annual spring-cleaning habit. Spring-cleaning is not just something that happens inside the home, but also something that should happen outside the home too, in the back yard. Every year your deck and patio furniture should be kept on the spring-cleaning to-do list.
Source: www.articles3000.com

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