Keeping your furniture looking beautiful doesn't take much time or effort. Wood furniture is not only beautiful but durable when cared for properly. First, try not to place it too closely to a heater vent as the dry heat could cause the wood to split or warp.
Approximately one-third of the cost of wooden furniture has to do with the process used to color and seal the finish and one of the basics of keeping the finish intact is to dust it regularly. Even a small amount of dust can actually create small scratches in the finish which eventually expose the wood, making it vulnerable to further damage.
You can reduce dust damage by simply using a soft cloth, slightly dampened, helping to trap dust instead of sending it airborne (landing it right back on your furniture). Avoid the multi-purpose cleaners – these weren't made for the finish on fine furniture, but for more durable surfaces like plastic and enameling. Using one of the new treated wipes to dust your furniture is a benefit since they're designed to collect the dust rather than pushing them off the wood and back into the air again
Polishing your furniture, even lightly will end creating the need to dust twice as often. Polishers attract dust rather than repelling it, so while the furniture will sparkle and look wonderful right after it's been polished, it will quickly look dusty again and some of that dust will mix in with the oil, making the furniture increasingly difficult to clean and easier to scratch.
Small scratches can be relatively easy to fix: just find a wax stick at your local hardware store that most closely matches the color of your wood. Simply "color" in the scratch and you're done. The wax will help protect the wood from the elements and the color should hide the scratch as well. Go ahead and re-wax this area of the furniture again, but make sure that the wax stick covered in the scratch and didn't just put a light bit of color over the exposed wood. Make sure the colored wax is applied heavily enough to match the depth of the scratch and create a flat surface again.
The color and grain differences are characteristic of natural wood. As it is exposed to sunlight, wood darkens as a result of oxidization.
In order to ensure that the product darkens uniformly, we recommend that objects placed on the surface be moved frequently during the first few months.
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