In which I perform a miracle!!

We have had summer for a week.

Hot sunny days.

Eating outside.

But now it's dull and windy.

Oh well.

I spent the last 4 days working a miracle.

I have teak garden furniture, I love the look and feel of  wood.

But....

I hate it...

when the wood goes grey, and not just grey but gets all blotchy with lichens and green with algae.

I have tried using teak oil, garden furniture stains, fencing paints...but all to no avail...it still goes grey!

Grey decking is OK but.......NOT my furniture!

A couple of years ago I discovered a new product that had been designed for pub furniture.

It's a thin liquid with an added colour.....light resisting pigments which are supposed to block UV rays...the ones that turn the furniture grey!

It's solvent free, water based, environmentally friendly....and easy to apply.....just clean the wood first then paint on.

Now I am not saying that this is perfect as it needs to be reapplied regularly....and the grey will show thro' if you don't do this, but it's the best that I have found.

My new furniture still looks good......time will tell how long for.

But that's more than can be said of my old benches.

Now here comes the miracle.....they also produce a product which will remove all the old grey.

I forgot to take a complete before photo until I was under way.

All you do is mix the powder in hot water and scrub it on with an old brush.

It's an environmentally and user friendly alkali.

Of course what it doesn't say on the box is that it needs an awful lot of scrubbing!!

It's really amazing tho' how thin the layers of grey is. The 'stuff' turns it into a sludge...then you wait five minutes and wash it off.

Lets take a closer look at how bad it was.

See all those splodges of lichen. now that was really, really bad.

See the sludge between the slats.

It does say that you can mix it stronger if necessary....well it was.

Especially difficult to scrub the edges of the bars even with a toothbrush.

So after scrubbing and scrubbing and washing and washing everywhere at least three times to comments of..there is a lot of work in that!

After two days I had had enough!

I knew that it wasn't yet perfect but very little is!

Two more days to give it two coats of protector all over, in every nook and cranny and the result is....

ta da!!

Isn't that just something!

WAS IT WORTH IT???

See the other bench behind, that has had every treatment under the sun

EXCEPT THIS ONE!

A close up...albeit blurred...camera focused on the garden beyond.

Only time will tell If I can maintain it every year. It takes a real bashing outside all year.

So wanna know what my magic 'stuff' is.

Not cheap, just ordered more on line (cheaper shhh!) You can read all about it here.

Comes from Cheshire like me....no affiliation with the product!