How To Clean Cane Furniture

Early in 2020 when my parents moved from their house of 50 years to a smaller one, my mother was going to throw out a set of cane chairs. She had owned them for as long as I can remember. I love the look of cane and wicker on a verandah. It has that sort of relaxed old-world charm I find appealing. Anyway, the chairs have sat on our verandah since then. They’ve been out in the elements and had started to look rather grubby. It was a nice day outside so I decided to clean the cane furniture and revarnish it. There’s nothing like an afternoon or evening on the verandah in summer.

The First Step to Clean Cane Furniture

First, I did a bit of searching and found out that cane furniture can be cleaned with a mixture of bleach and water. I did not have any bleach on hand and could not be bothered braving the shops (lazy). So I got out a bottle of Selley’s Tile and Laminate Cleaner, a scrubbing brush, and our Karcher. (pressure washer)

WARNING: the tile and laminate cleaner is pretty heavy-duty stuff. I’ve seen it lift paint off timber. Do not use it on your furniture if you want the varnish to remain intact. You should also make sure you do this in a well-ventilated space. I decided to clean our cane furniture on the lawn so that the grass would soak up the excess water. I don’t like to waste water.

The chairs had a lot of mildew on them. Some spots were thick with it and dirt. So, I gave each chair a spray with the tile cleaner and then started to scrub. It did not take long before the dirt and mildew were removed and a nice clean chair was left. You can see on the arms where I had scrubbed. After that I got out the pressure washer. It was easy to get the tough grime off with that. I left the chairs to dry in the sun.

Fixing Up the Cane

One thing that happened because I used the pressure washer was that a lot of the cane strapping that held the chairs together came loose or snapped. If was very old so I sort of expected that. I spent some time rethreading and tacking some bits back into place. One of the cross bars on the base of one chair needed attention too but it was easy to screw it back in place and make the chair sturdy again.

I finished cleaning the cane chairs by giving them a new coat of clear gloss varnish.Because it was a nice day the spray dried in around twenty minutes. I was then able to do a second coat and put my chairs back on the verandah for another round of summer afternoon drinks.

You can see more of our verandah here.

And if love coundtry style verandahs like I do, you’ll enjoy the inspiration I collected in this post