Antique Furniture Cleaning Tips
- Clean any intricate areas with a soft brush (a hard brush may scratch or damage finish or gloss coating)
- Your hand hair dryer is an excellent device for blowing the dust from intricate woodwork,
delicate carvings or statuary and artificial flowers.
- Every six moths use a good quality wax (beeswax) polish to treat the wood.
- If applying metal cleaners, make sure they do not get onto any of the wood surface.
- For poorly polished pieces, apply the polish and leave for 12 hours to allow the polish to nourish the wood.
- Apply polish sparingly with a soft cloth and then buff off with lint free cloth.
- Select a polish appropriate for the color of wood to be treated.
- Do not use silicone based sprays as they will leave a film which may become difficult to remove.
- Oil based polishes tend to darken the surface.
- During cleaning always take particular care not to scratch surfaces.
- Spillages or rings left by wine glasses can be treated with a damp cloth soaked in a weak solution of vinegar (but only use on well polished surfaces). After cleaning wipe again with water and dry thoroughly. Do not polish wet surfaces.
- Varnished surfaces can usually be cleaned nicely with a cloth dipped in cool, weak tea.
- To polish very old furniture use a mixture of two parts turpentine to one part of linseed oil, or equal parts of turpentine, linseed oil and vinegar. Apply with a soft cloth and rub. Polish with a dry cloth.