teak oiled outdoor furniture gone blotchy

[stonysue]

Hi, I have just purchased and outdoor teak table and chairs set that started to fade very quickly so I was advised to teak oil it.

I applied the oil with fine wire wool and it looked great for a couple of days, although remained a bit tacky. A heavy downpour of rain hit us on day 3 and my table and chairs are now really stained and blotchy.

Any suggestions of what to do would be very much appreciated.

Susie

 

[custard]

I'm going to guess that you didn't fully wipe off the surplus after application. To do that really needs a fresh clean rag and a lot of elbow grease. However, you are where you are, so best thing now is a good rub down with thinners to get all the surplus off, then if necessary re-apply.

It's a difficult call finishing outdoor furniture, there's no magical finish that will keep your table looking good for more than one year (all the tins you see in B&Q that promise more...well they're fibbing). So you're looking at quite a lot of work each and every spring. I can understand why many decide that the pale silvery surface that timber fades to outdoors is actually rather lovely!

 

[ED65]

The surface remaining tacky does seem to indicate you didn't clean off the surplus fully when you first applied the teak oil. The instructions on the tin might not make this quite as clear as they should but as custard says with this sort of product you must be scrupulous about wiping off excess for best results, the surface shouldn't feel oily any more.

I think before you do anything else the first thing to do is make sure the furniture is fully dry, and that means bringing them under cover if necessary. You can't work on them properly if the wood is still damp from the rain.

Once you're sure they're dry then assess how the wood looks. Fingers crossed, it might not be that bad.