Taking care of our teak garden furniture

It's got to the time of year when we almost expect the weather to be good hasn't it?  And by good, I mean warm enough to sit in the garden without adding an English summer 'layer' (aka a cardy) and generally over the past few weeks, I think we've done ok.  

As ever some days have been better than others, but it's also clear that our garden furniture has also seen better days.  Pondering this I realised it's been a while since I spent an afternoon sprucing it up.  But, I think it's getting to the time to give it some more attention, don't you?

Teak garden furniture is a classic, but yet on-trend choice for garden furniture, we've had this set since 2008 and apart from that one scrub have done very little with it.  We should do more, I'm sure but the silvering has a certain appeal, and if I'm honest you forget how good it looks when it's cleaned and spruced up.

This year for the first time that I can remember I've moved our houseplants out into the garden, and they seem to be really enjoying it.  But as you can see, they'd look better if the table had some care.  But it's relatively easy to give teak outdoor furniture some TLC and improve its looks and longevity, and it's a task this time I'll be delegating to MOH (he doesn't know yet!)

I read somewhere that it's going to be a good year for strawberries this year, and so far that prediction has been proven right.  We're currently in strawberry overload from the plot and the plants we have in our garden are also producing fruits, which they don't always do.  I love a strawberry or two, so I'm very much in the "long may it continue" camp - what about you?

MOH though is getting to the "what strawberries and cream again" point so let me know your best ways of using a glut of strawberries.

STRAWBERRIES - YUM!

We're off to Gardeners' World Live tomorrow and I'm fully expecting to be "assaulted" by lots of loveliness, for the garden and for my tummy, as there's also entry to BBC Good Food Live too.  It's my first time at the show, so it'll be interesting to compare it to both the house and garden shows I've been to this year.  

But I bet I'll see plenty of garden furniture, and I bet plenty of it will be teak too.

* This is a collaborative post, but all views are my own.

Reclamation at Grand Designs Live

One of the new additions at this year’s Grand Designs Live was a reclamation area with items from Lassco and English Rose kitchens on display. I would love to spend hours (and no doubt hours more) perusing a whole market like this, so was really pleased to take a legitimate wander around in a "well-we're-here-dear-we-should-take-a-look" kind of way.  You see MOH is much less of a ‘make do’ kind of person (and I mean that in a make do and mend way) and likes to have good quality items, that last. I think that's great, but for some items I like to think I’m more adaptable and open to reclaimed items, and have a much more flexible approach to fittings and furnishings with character, which at times can be tricky, but usually we end up with a compromise. 

I think the closest I've got him to a salvage yard is Maltby Street Market, but when it's been turned into a hip weekend market and usually involves a burger and cakes, actually we haven't even done that for a while...  

But presented with a whole area of the show dedicated to recycling and reuse I was keen to make the most of the opportunity.  I’d also been lured over by the brass knobs and pretty tiles, yes I can be such a magpie...

MOH soon picked up though when there were lights to look at, not necessarily these, as these are far too pretty, and too small for MOH’s big sell (to me) project.  I liked the fluted shade, and the brown wire though, but they wouldn’t do for our dining area, as they're too delicate, but would be great over a dressing table or as bedside lights. One day, we may find a light we agree on - I haven't given up hope!

I was enthralled by this old gymnasium flooring, MOH humoured me, and I know while he made sympathetic noises that really he’d be trying to peel or clean off the sticky markings around the red sections. Seriously. I once bought a bottle of wine that came covered in dust, on purpose, he dusted it...

This would make great flooring in a high traffic area wouldn’t it?  I'd be wondering where it came from, what sports and sports men and women had played on it, and if it had played host to any famous trainers.  

Ah, more brass knobs!  Rose brass no less, I didn’t even know that was a thing - but it does look great, and so do the pink patterned tiles. 

In the English Rose kitchen display, it was knobs of another kind that caught my eye.  These traditional shaped, but colourful handles made me smile - we don't have kitchen handles like this anymore do we?  Well in fact, I don't have any kitchen handles at all in our kitchen, and (obviously) I like that too.

The kitchen units which had been spruced up looked great, it's not a kitchen that I would go for but I admired how it'd been given a new lease of life and brought up to date with a modern look and feel.

Clearly there's still some work to do on this one!

But look at the shape of the units above, our local kitchen shop has this very shape units in its window, so it just goes to show that quite often styles come back into vogue, even in homewares.

I mentioned lights before and this is the one thing that I think MOH would happily have a reclaimed piece without any questions, in fact we'd both happily have something like the one pictured below if we had the space, and if we didn't already have two standard lights.

It's the style of lights pictured below that we disagree on.  It's not that I don't like them, but I'm not convinced by the amount of light they give out and think one chunky light while looking industrial above the table, isn't really the look I want - and I'd be concerned that it would fall on my table!  

The green enamel type lights in the background are also good but I'd want to be convinced by the light a single pendant gives out, I think these would look better in a row of three, and that means more work and making holes in the ceiling which I'm less keen on.  That's really our dilemma, wanting something more modern than we currently have but not compromising how much light it gives out.

We'll get there, and in the meantime we'll have fun looking at many, many lights, reclaimed or not!

Post Comment Love 15 - 17 June

Hello there and welcome to another #PoCoLo - if you were here last week, it was great to see you. If you're new here then you're very welcome and I just know that you're going to find some cracking posts, and possibly even some new-to-you blogs. 

You'll remember that last week we had some time off, this week no such luck and that seems to be the theme of the week.  We weren't fortunate enough to escape The Letter about the allotment so we've spent some time over there strimming and generally make it look as if we're tending the plot, rather than just growing weeds, which admittedly is an easy mistake to make!

Sadly though I am still the human of choice for the midges (and worse) over there and once again I'm sporting some way too red and way too swollen bites. This time though I've one on my forearm which has been painful enough for me to actually phone the doctors.  If it carries on this way I'll be queuing for an emergency appointment this morning - I hope I'm not, but unless there's a dramatic change over night I think that's unlikely.

On a cheerier note, my photo this week is a burst of yellow - what else? - that I've walked past on my walking commute route.  Let's hope the bites calm down again, and that I become less tasty to the bite-y population.

Blogger Showcase: Karen from The Next Best Thing To Mummy

This week you can read Karen's full answers over on Morgan's blog, but before you go let me whet your appetite.  Some of you will most likely already know Karen and her blog as she is a #PoCoLo-er linker, she's chatty, kind and strong and blogs as a hobby to pass the time since a stroke - you'll find plenty of posts about child minding, but do pop over and find out more about Karen.

Don't forget to pop over and say hello on her social channels too:  Facebook  -  Twitter   -   Instagram.

An InLinkz Link-up