Care & Repair

Solid oiled hardwood is not delicate. It is, however, alive to the room it lives in, and there are three or four things worth knowing in the first year.

What the colour will do

None of these timbers stay the shade they arrive. Cherry does most of its darkening in the first six months and it does it hard — leave a bowl in one place for a fortnight over the first summer and you will lift it to find a pale ghost. It evens out. Oak ambers slowly and never stops. Ash barely moves at all.

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Humidity is the only thing that really matters

Wood takes on and gives up moisture with the air around it, and it does so across the grain rather than along it. A 900 mm wide oak top can be 3 to 4 mm wider in a humid August than in a dry, heated January. Everything we build is designed to allow that: tops are buttoned rather than screwed solid, panels float in their grooves, and wide doors are made from narrow battens.

Hold the room between 40% and 60% relative humidity and you will never see a problem. A cheap hygrometer and a humidifier through the heating season cost less than one repair.

Repairs

Send us a photograph. Most things — a ring, a dent, a scuffed edge, a drawer that has gone stiff in a wet spell — have a ten-minute answer we can talk you through. For anything structural, the ten-year guarantee on the joinery covers the work and we cover the freight both ways.