I got this chair from my father as a hand me down. Well, the true story is he had it in storage and I begged and bothered him for this chair until he dug it out. It’s something I remember from my childhood, and it’s broken and missing cushions, but knowing me, it wasn’t going to stop me from wanting it. The wood on this old teak chair was dry and looked just sad. There were 2 choices I had, I could polyurethane it or find something to renew the wood itself. I came across a blog post about rubbing coconut oil on old dry wood to renew the luster. I thought it was worth a shot. After testing it on the underside and liking what I saw, I went ahead and did the rest of the chair.
This is what the chair looked like before, dry and aged.
Here’s another shot. Cats love to help. They also love coconut oil.
Here’s what it started to look like once I rubbed the oil on the chair. It looks amazing! The downside was that I had to rub and rub and rub to get the oily feeling out of the chair. I wanted that refreshed look without the feel, and went through quite a few paper towels.
Here’s the arm of the chair after I finished it.
The finished chair! With no cushions, I just draped a blanket over it and added a folded blanket to the seat.
This is the arm in the sunlight. The chair looks great next to the table by it (that WILL get refinished this summer.)
I think the chair looks great. NOTE: Don’t start using coconut oil on chairs and furniture around your house to freshen them up if you plan on refinishing them. You’ll get the oil into the grain making the color weird or keeping a water based poly from sticking to the furniture. I would only recommend this for pieces like this, natural wood that’s been dried out that you just want to bring back to life. Happy re-finishing!
