Tips for Dining Room Furniture Care

Having bought your handmade dining table and chairs, you will want to keep it nicely polished. Natural products like beeswax and oils are back in fashion. They are environmentally friendly, but generally not as durable as modern solvent based products. Polish manufacturers are constantly developing water based products, and oil and wax mixtures that are more durable to heat and moisture, while having little impact on our environment.

To care for your dining room furniture avoid silicon based products. Natural beeswax polish is good to use. Natural wax can come as a spray or a thicker paste from a tin. The thicker paste can be applied with a rag or a stiff brush, a shoe brush is good especially on carving. This can be buffed up with a soft rag, towelling is ideal.

A beeswax paste can easily be made using a 1lb of yellow beeswax and half pint of turpentine or good quality white spirit. By adding a tablespoon of petrol, you will speed up the drying of the wax, as it aids the evaporation of the turpentine. Beeswax can be bought from a local beekeeper, so look out for honey for sale. The wax can be shredded with a knife or broken into bits using a hammer. It is easier if you wrap the wax in a cloth first. The wax can then be melted in a saucepan, within another pan, like melting chocolate, but beware, you are using a flammable liquid near a heat source. I find that the easy way to make the paste is to put the broken bits of wax in a tin, add the white spirit, put a lid on and leave it for a day or two, stirring occasionally.

Try to avoid putting your dining table in direct sunlight. It will cause to wood to fade or even shrink. A fruit bowl left in the centre for sometime will end up with a darker area under it. If furniture is put in front of a window, it is worth closing the curtain or blind when direct sunlight is on the furniture.

Rings from hot cups, red wine and watermarks can often be removed by a professional polisher, but please be careful attempting to remove the mark yourself; you could end up with a bigger problem than you started with.

Gradually your furniture will age, taking the odd knock and dent as it becomes an antique, gaining patina from a build up of wax polish mixed with dust, creating darker areas in the corners and lighter areas in the high spots. It is worth knowing that over time, light woods darken, and dark timbers lighten, so your natural oak dining table will darken to a Tudor oak colour, and your deep brown walnut dining table will gradually become a honey colour.