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Sorta Random Sunday: How to Seal Your Outdoor Furniture

Last week, Selenid and I bought a couple of new pieces of outdoor furniture. We got a wooden bench and a picnic table (with two benches). In learning from our past mistakes, we knew that we had to seal the furniture.

Our past mistake

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When we got our new house one year ago, we bought a picnic table for outside. Some place that our kids and us could sit and eat and hang out, etc.

We found a good one for a very reasonable price on Wayfair and bought it. The website said that it was water resistant and made for outdoor use.

Buuuttttt…we kept it outside and realized after a few weeks and a few days of rain that it was decidedly not water resistant.

We called Wayfair and they agreed to send us a new one at no charge. But, we ended up keeping the old table out until this summer when we bough the new outdoor bench.

How to seal your outdoor furniture

Selenid is the expert at this. She learned how to do this after sealing a new counter at our first investment property.

Related Post:
Insider Look: Deal Analysis of My First Investment Property

So, here are the steps:

seal furniture
  1. Go to a hardware store and buy a cloth drop sheet, fine sandpaper, and the outdoor seal of your choice
  2. Set up and area outside to do your work. Lay down the drop cloth and place the piece of furniture on top.
  3. Sand down the wood surfaces of the furniture using the fine sandpaper. Light pressure is key.
  4. After sanding, get a towel and wipe down the surfaces. You don’t want little flakes from the sanding to get caught by the seal.
  5. Lightly coat the wood surfaces with your sealant. You can use a roller but a brush gives a smoother seal.
  6. Wait 6-24 hours and redcoat as needed.

The one caveat to this is that if you have a piece of furniture was a lot of irregular surfaces, you can use a spray seal instead of a standard seal that comes in a paint can and needs to be brushed on. We did this for the bench since it has a lot of nooks and crannies.

The key with the spray is to make sure you spray all surfaces evenly.

How it worked out

We sealed the picnic tables and benches and were very proud of our work. Heck, we even sealed the old water damaged picnic table to salvage what we could.

We bought the stuff mainly because we were having an outdoor birthday party for our son, Emery, who was turning 2.

As you can probably guess, instead of nice weather as was originally predicted, it poured the entire day! SO, we moved the party inside.

But, the furniture held up like a champ! So there you have it.

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      The Prudent Plastic Surgeon

      Jordan Frey MD, a plastic surgeon in Buffalo, NY, is one of the fastest-growing physician finance bloggers in the world. See how he went from financially clueless to increasing his net worth by $1M in 1 year and how you can do the same! Feel free to send Jordan a message at [email protected].

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