Garden Bench

When used in the great outdoors, as this bench is intended to be, we apply a minimum of two coats of General Finishes Out Door Oil.  Over the years we have tried a number of products for this purpose, including Thompsons, CWF, Olympic and Cabot, and have found the General Finishes brand to be the superior product.  So that's what we use, and we highly recommend staying with this brand for routine maintenance of your garden bench.

And, no, General Finished does NOT pay us to say that.  We don't even get a discount.

This finish may be applied with a brush, a rag or with a sprayer, even a hand pump garden sprayer will work and this is handy if you're doing something big like a deck.  We choose to apply it with our HVLP sprayer; this uses more material than if we applied with a brush, but it goes so much faster.  Apply enough oil to cover all surfaces.

Let the oil set for 10 minutes, watch for dry spots and add more where dry spots appear.  Then wipe the excess oil away with clean rags.  When a rag is saturated, dispose of it and get a dry one, continuing to use a soaked rag will just make streaks and smears.

The oil must cure for 24 to 36 hours before re-coating.  Two coats are recommended, three is even better, no need to sand between coats.  Not only does the extra coat provide more water protection, but the extra layer of finish adds more UV protection to help keep the wood from graying out.

Routine maintenance is done each spring for the first three years, then every couple of years there after.  Use a quality deck cleaner (available from home improvement stores) to remove the gray from the wood, and allow it to dry thoroughly.  Sand any rough spots with 150 grit sand paper.  Reapply at least two coats of the Outdoor Oil as described above.  If you have extremely harsh winters, covering the benches to protect them from the snow and ice is a good idea.

You may place the benches anywhere you want, but be sure to keep the feet from touching the soil.  Enzymes in dirt will leech up into the end grain of the legs and begin rot as they digest the wood fibers.  See the little dishes the legs are sitting in in the photo above?  We do that to keep finish that runs down the leg pooled under the foot so the thirsty end grain can drink up as much of it as it can.  Making sure the end grain is sealed helps, but it is not a total solution.  That would be to keep the feet out of the dirt by setting the bench on gavel, concrete or just placing paver bricks under each leg.

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