Why you need Teak Garden Furniture Sets in your garden

• With the summer months fast approaching, it is the ideal time to start getting your garden ready. Whether you want to make your garden comfortable for you and your family to spend relaxing evenings enjoying the warm nights, or if you intend to make your garden welcoming for all those BBQ’s and garden parties you intend to host. Teak garden furniture sets are ideal, not only are they practical, giving you and your family and guests somewhere to sit, relax and enjoy the garden but they also adds the wow factor to your outdoor space, making it more welcoming than ever before.

 

The Benefits of Garden Furniture Sets

There are lots of benefits to adding garden furniture sets to your property. Such as:
• A place to relax: if you have a furniture garden set, you always have a place to sit and relax in your garden.
• Convenience: it is nice to have soft and padded sun loungers etc. but these are not built to handle poor weather, which means you have to bring them indoors when they aren’t being used and take them back outside when you do want to use them. Garden furniture sets, on the other hand, are durable and weather resistant, they are made to be placed outside and kept outside which means you no longer have the hassle of taking your garden furniture in every time it threatens to rain.
• Property value: if you intend to leave the garden furniture sets in your property when you move out they might actually add value to your property and make your home more appealing making it easier to sell. Of course, these garden furniture sets are not a permanent fixture in the garden, so if you do want to take them with you, you can.
• Wow factor: garden furniture sets look amazing, they really spruce up your garden and make it much more welcoming. This is fantastic for anyone hoping to use their garden to entertain family and friends. Whether you are hosting a party or cooking up a barbeque, these garden furniture sets are sure to add the wow factor and get people talking.

 

with Southwold Teak Arm Chairs

 

Why Teak Garden Furniture Sets?

Teak garden furniture sets are particularly popular, and for good reason. There are many reasons why you should consider investing in a teak garden furniture set. These include, but are not limited to:
• Range: Teak garden furniture sets come in a full range of styles, sizes and shapes, which means you are sure to find something that suits the design of your garden and will fit perfectly into whatever space you have available.
• Attractiveness: There are lots of different wood options, some look better than others. This is true of teak furniture, which adds a sense of luxury and sophistication.
• Durability: Teak is an incredibly durable wood, it handles the changing weather well and doesn’t deteriorate as quickly as other woods. Not only does Teak wood not warp in the wet like other woods, but it also handles the sunshine well. Rather than becoming damaged by the sun, exposure to sunlight actually helps to improve the appearance of the wood, making it look more mature and attractive. This is great for furniture that is designed to be kept outside, in the wet, cold and even snow. By investing in a teak garden furniture set, you ensure your garden furniture is kept looking newer for longer.
• Smoothness: Teak is a naturally smooth wood, it is enriched with natural oils that give it a smooth and finished surface. This adds to appearance of the wood and makes the garden furniture much more comfortable to use.

There are lots of different garden furniture sets available and it might be tempting to choose a cheaper option, but actually owning a teak garden furniture set could not only make your garden look even better, but it could save you money in the long run.

 

www.chairsandtables.co.uk

Why buying quality garden furniture saves

High-quality outdoor furniture is more than a mere whim. Aside from the aesthetics behind hardwood, designer furniture, there are several other reasons that justify taking hundreds or thousands out of pocket for a few units of eye-catching, durable furniture, not the least of which is that it saves you money.

An economist would concur and strengthen our case, but as none were to be found to vouch for us, we’ll have to let common sense and logic feature heavily in this discourse, much to the chagrin of discount furniture stores.

The mathematics behind long-term savings is surprisingly simple. Let’s take an example:

You buy a garden chair from a retail outlet that specializes in discount furniture. You’re pleased you paid only £25 and you can’t wait to tell everyone what a bargain it was. But was it, really, a bargain?

There are four questions you need to ask yourself before you can answer that:

1. What is the estimated lifetime of the chair?

2. How much will it cost per day to own and use this chair?

3. Would I be able to sell it for a decent price?

4. Can I refurbish or customize it?

5. Could I pass it on to my heirs?

These are all relevant and, dare we say, salient questions. A rough estimate of the lifetime of an inexpensive chair would be 30 minutes to 30 months. Something is bound to go wrong with a joint or two, some of the legs would probably start to wobble, the finish would wear out and crack, and before you know it, you’d find yourself falling when you least expect it, your legs up in the air and dangling like a ‘wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man’. The cost of owning the chair is approximately 2 pence per day. So, you’d effectively be paying 2 pence a day for the privilege of using a cheap, run-down and unsafe chair.

You could try selling the chair to recoup some of your investment, but since it’s a used piece of furniture with wobbly legs, which has devalued considerably in the past imaginary 30 months, has sustained a good deal of wear and tear due to exposure to the elements, and has a lot of competition from newer models dished out by the same store or others, it’s safe to assume nobody would be interested in it.

There isn’t the slightest possibility that you could pass it on to your heirs. Also, cheap garden furniture requires constant cleaning, staining, and sanding, and it would eventually rot and crack, however rigorous your maintenance ritual. Refurbishing may be an option, but do you really see yourself spending money in the hope that someone would eventually buy this garden furniture at a garage sale for anything more than you’ve already paid for it? That’s right; your last resort is to sell it for firewood.

Let’s assume, however, you pick out a lovely teakwood garden chair, instead, made by a flesh and bone craftsman with real, honest-to-goodness tools. You love the design of it, the intricate carving, the grain, the texture and smoothness of it, and you decide to splash out on a £200 chair. You take care of it to the best of your abilities. Teakwood naturally repels termites and other pests, so you wouldn’t have a tough job of it. You could leave it outside for the rest of your life and nobody would be any the wiser, because it has natural oils and preservatives that make it weatherproof. You should be able to enjoy the chair for a lifetime, and your family can enjoy it for 100 years or more. Repairs shouldn’t be a problem, because teakwood won’t shatter or crack, like plywood or fibreboard. Unlike a discount store, where furniture is only in season once and then you never find a matching chair for your incomplete set, a teak wood collection will be ‘in season’ for years on end.

When you compare prices for garden furniture, you’ll find there’s not that much of a difference between high-quality and mediocre pieces, because a good deal of retailers pass their furniture as high-grade. Before you start making alternate plans for your extra kidney, browse for other offers. Try to find out who produced the chair you want and find an outlet, or as an absolute last resort, track down the craftsman. Let’s say you’re an excellent researcher, tracker and negotiator, and that you managed to get the chair we mentioned above for £150. Let’s do the maths: price of 150 divided by 36,480 days in 100 years yields a daily cost of around £0.004. So even though you pay more upfront, you save more, in the long run, and you have a gorgeous piece of furniture that has become part of the family. It’s the kind of chair you’d willingly take to the grave with you, if they had a big enough casket. But because it’s nice to share, you could leave it to your siblings when you pass away, along with the rest of the teakwood furniture you’ve collected throughout your life. Morbid as all this may sound, the garden furniture would be a sought-after heirloom. Buyers would literally flock to take the collection off your hands.

To conclude, there’s no reason to opt for inexpensive furniture today, because its long-term costs would most probably outweigh those of high-quality pieces. Additionally, inflation will only rise in the next few decades, so a cent spent today is worth more than a cent spent five or ten years from now, meaning that all commodities will cost more and more as we age. So, save yourself the trouble and save yourself the money. Go out there and get that teakwood garden furniture, because then and only then will you be justified in saying you’ve grabbed yourself a bargain.

Mould on Teak Garden Furniture

From my experience mould is only an issue with poor quality teak furniture.

The best quality teak will be kiln dried over at least 21 days to slowly reduce the moisture content of the timber before moulding and assembly. Teak is naturally about 30% water when the tree is felled. The drying process in large industrial ovens slowly reduces the moisture content to around 10 – 14% moisture. This ultimately reduces any chance of warping or cracking once the furniture arrives into the drier air of the British climate compared to the humid tropical climate of Indonesia.

Leaving teak planks in an oven for 3 weeks costs money, which ultimately is passed onto the consumer. However should mean that the furniture will now last many many years longer and probably pays for itself handsomely on a £/years of use basis.

Poorer quality teak tends to be between 18 and 24% moisture and has only been dried natural by being left outside the factory in the tropical humid heat.

The high moisture content of the furniture once packaged and then stored is a breeding ground for mould and an obvious indicator of poorly manufactured furniture.

The simple application of silica gel sachets inside the packaging should solve any natural moisture problems occuring inside the shipping container and any good manufacturer will hang around 8 large moisture absorbing bags inside the container.

So advice would be to avoid any furniture that is mouldy

Look for retailers that source and retail low moisture teak garden furniture such as Chairs and Tables Limited. Companies that sell teak at moisture levels at less than 14%

Spring has arrived

Spring has arrived

The cold weather seems to have passed and the garden is blooming into life. It will soon be time to fire up the lawnmower for that first cut of the year. Spring is also a great time to think about entertaining outdoors and considering whether to replace your garden furniture or even make that investment into something new.

Specialising in the finest quality teak garden furniture, sourced from sustainable plantation teakwood, Chairs and Tables Limited have a wide range of garden furniture suitable for every location. At this time of year new stock is arriving and new products are being introduced.

New products for 2012 include a smaller version of the popular 6ft Turnworth teak ring table. This 5ft wide round table includes an integrated lazy susan that allows convenient passing of dishes around the table. With the ability to accommodate 6 quests easily, with all the chair options available, this makes a great alternative garden furniture table set option and a great statement piece.

Other new products include 2 new benches the Caversham Antique Bench and the Weston Woven Bench. These benches are beautiful crafted with decorative carvings. Both are available in 5ft widths and come with the option of cushion.

Chairs and Tables Limited are UK suppliers of teak garden furniture www.chairsandtables.co.uk

Finding sustainable and ethical teak garden furniture

It is often the asked where can I find FSC teak. More and more customers are concerned about the legality of the wooden garden furniture they are buying; as well becoming more sceptical about wooden garden furniture that has been made of wood from tropical rain forests.

The story behind FSC teak and illegal teak from tropical rain forests

At this moment there is no good quality teak wood with FSC label available in the market. Some teak wood from South American plantations has the certification of teak but the availability is limited and the quality of this teak is not as nice as the 2 most famous producers of teak: Myanmar (before known as Burma) and Indonesia.

 Most garden furniture produced in Vietnam comes from teak wood from Africa, Laos & Cambodia and Burma.

• African teak wood is mostly young teak wood with a lot of sapwood and the legality of the wood is very doubtable.
• Laos and Cambodia teak is less in quality with many dead knots and definitely comes from tropical rain forests. All environmental organisations are protesting against the further logging in these countries.
• Burmese teak is maybe the nicest teak wood available on the market. Nice performance but with a very bad background. The Burmese military government needs the money of the teak export to finance the military regime and is logging the tropical rain forests in fast tempo. All NGO’s are warning strongly not to support the military regime in Burma and to stop the fast deforestation of Miramar; they warn for a huge ecological disaster in the coming decades when the deforestation of Burma continues.

Indonesian teak from teak plantations around Java

In Asia, Indonesia is the only country producing garden furniture from plantation teak. The Dutch planted teak (Tectona Grandis) from high quality around Java. They started the first plantations; the same plantations still supply the wood for the garden furniture industry in Indonesia nowadays. Although the logging went too fast in the beginning 90’s of the past century nowadays many reforestation programs are set up and within the next decade many problems of shortage will be solved. Nevertheless the quantity of available teak wood is limited for the moment; the Indonesian government is doing a good job to avoid natural disasters like are happening in Burma nowadays. The Indonesian Government controls the logging of the wood well but still some illegal logging can not be avoided. For teak garden furniture buyers that want to be sure it is important that their supplier has a good Chain of Custody (COC). The Retailer should be able to give you the guarantee that there wood is coming from Javanese plantations and that the wood has been officially purchased from Perum Perhutani, the official governmental organisation that regulates the logging, administration and sales of teak wood (Tectona Grandis) from plantations. Perum Perhutani works together with projects of several NGO’s to insure the logging is environmentally acceptable.

Retailers, wholesalers, importers, exporters and manufacturers should have checks in place to certify the source of the wood from the administration departments of Perum Perhutani to insure the wood is legally logged from highly responsible organized plantations.

Let this year a good start for the teak forests around Asia and choose for garden furniture made from legal teak wood.

 

Chairs and Tables Limited are proud to only supply teak garden furniture made using legally sourced from Indonesian sustainable plantation teakwood