Wooden mantel maintenance

Over time, you will need to keep the lovely patina of your new timber surround in the condition that it arrived. This is not a hard thing to do, and I would recommend waxing once a year just to keep on top of it.
The wooden fireplace you have bought has been stained and hand-waxed to achieve the finish it has. It’s a painstaking process, but we think we have the colours just right now.

First off, we sand the timber to a finish that’s ready to stain, then apply a water-based stain made from Van Dyke Crystals (Our own secret recipe is even more secret than Heinz 57).  After the two coats of stain are applied, it’s then flattened off using 0000 steel wool.

We then leave to dry thoroughly. This usually takes around 2 hours, and then we apply the wax; we use Morrells wax, which is a fine-quality wax very similar to Briwax med Brown. The wax we use gives a more even finish and buffs up very easily.

We apply the wax with a paintbrush, then wipe away any brush marks. It’s then left for 15 minutes to dry and then buffed by hand with a polishing brush and then finally a lint-free cloth.

This is the process from the start, so it will help you if you get any marks on your surround. Just follow this process to get your Pine mantel looking as good as new.

For the Oak Mantels we supply, we finish them in a different way. The Oak Lincoln is a good example of one of the surrounds finished in teak oil.

It is very simple to apply, and each wooden mantel has 2–3 coats applied and is rubbed down in between each coat so the next one takes.

As the oil is water-resistant, there should be very little maintenance to the oak surround. For general use, we would recommend just keeping it clean and dry. If you do get any marks on it, the easiest thing to do is to rub the area down back to the bare timber and apply 2 coats of teak oil and hey presto, an unseen repair.

As always, if you need any help, we are real people with lots of free advice. Just Contact Us.