Last year, my wife and I wanted to purchase some wooden garden furniture. The list was fairly short: a picnic table with some matching chairs (maybe even a combination picnic table with bench seats attached) and a couple of easy chairs for lounging. Over a period of a couple of weeks we trawled various garden centres, shopping emporiums and builder’s merchants in a fifty kilometre radius of our house in Pinoso. We particularly wanted the items to be made of wood so they could blend nicely into our garden. However, we quickly discovered problems finding wooden furniture of a quality matching our requirements; nearly all were rather wobbly and the general workmanship of an inferior standard. One wooden chair actually broke when my wife sat on it. She blames whoever sat on it before her – I’m saying nothing. It didn’t take long to realise our quest was proving fruitless.
We began considering other options. Plastic was a non starter from the off as we had personal experience of how they eventually degenerate into dull, brittle junk in a matter of not many years; wrought iron/metal was expensive and not that comfortable, even with cushions, and friends with the same seemed to be always having to paint them every spring. The final option was the cast concrete type. But if our table specifications alone were to be met then a crane would be needed to make the installation, and it was expensive anyway.
So after going round the houses we arrived back at wooden furniture, our first choice. But where to get what we wanted at the right price and quality? All the items had to be made of solid, treated timber, particularly the chairs if we were to avoid another badly pinched bottom. The wood had to be stained to a colour that blended into our courtyard and garden and they needed to be comfortable, attractive, easy to maintain; in short, superior products at a price we could afford.
I never considered having our wooden picnic table and chairs made by a professional carpenter because, so I thought then, they would be too expensive. I was wrong. Based close to Fortuna and Pinoso, Woodworks Direct gave us exactly what we wanted at a price which fitted comfortably within our budget. My advice: save the car, the petrol, and the blood pressure and have your wooden picnic table and garden furniture hand made by professionals. It’s worth every penny.
