About Our Outdoor Tables

16 Minute Read

Finding great garden furniture is essential for enjoying a great summer in our gardens. When the first warm days of spring start to hit, we all start to think about getting out into our gardens, planning al fresco dinners, what we need to buy in order to really enjoy our outdoor dining. Maybe even some of us are thinking about setting up an outdoor kitchen this year – and that’s before we even get to sorting out what needs to be done in the way of weeding!

With so much to do to get your garden ready for summer, choosing great garden furniture can end up being a time-consuming task to deal with. You want quality garden furniture, but you don’t want complicated choices, and you don’t want to pay through the nose for great quality. That’s why we’ve created our range of outdoor furniture – a collection of simple, elegant, and hard-wearing tables and benches that look great, are easy to put together, and that will last. In this post, we’re taking a look at everything to do with our outdoor tables and benches – from the wood and the legs, and how they make a great sustainable option for your home

How Can I Create a Rustic Country Bedroom?

Outdoor Tables: The Wood

First things first, and most importantly, all of our furniture is hand crafted in our workshop in West Sussex. We use high quality, certified pine that is sourced from 100% sustainably managed forests.

When we’re creating all of our furniture – not just our garden furniture – our craftsmen choose every piece carefully, and work with the wood to maintain as many of the rustic characteristics as possible. Whether they are patterns in the grain, saw marks from processing in the forest, or natural splits in the wood, we make the most of them, to create beautiful and unique pieces of furniture. These types of effects simply can’t be found in pieces of furniture bought from mass manufacturers.

All of our outdoor furniture is carefully finished with rounded corners, to prevent injury as far as possible. At the height of each table, we’re thinking about toddlers walking into them in particular, but rounded off corners helps to ensure no nicks or scrapes on shins too – important when it is bare legs season!

Outdoor Tables: The Wood Finish

The right wood finish is essential for the longevity of any piece of furniture, but when the product is to be used outdoors, it is even more important to get the right treatment, to keep the piece looking great. For our garden furniture, we use Osmo oil, a natural wood stain that also provides outstanding protection from the weather. Not only does your furniture need protection from rain, but it also needs protecting from the sun – and Osmo oil contains UV filters, to prevent the wood stain from being bleached by the sun, and turning grey. It also contains active ingredients to protect against mould, algae, and fungal attack – all of which can be a problem for wood furniture.

We selected Osmo oil for our outdoor furniture because it needs a finish that performs, without being harmful to the environment. Osmo finishes are based on carefully harvested natural oils, that are good for the wood, the people that use the furniture, and the environment.

Outdoor Tables: The Size

It can be tricky when you’re picking garden furniture, because not all furniture comes in the size you want, or maybe you find the right size, but don’t love the legs the manufacturer has chosen. We don’t think that should be the case, and as we make each piece of furniture to order, we offer a range of sizes for both your outdoor tables, and your outdoor benches.

Our outdoor tables are available as small as 80cm x 60cm, and as large as 200cm x 80cm – with different lengths available in between, so you can get the perfect size for your space, and the number of people with which you share your home. For our outdoor benches, lengths are between 60cm to 200cm, and are a fixed width of 40cm. Should you require a different size of outdoor furniture, get in touch – we can advise you, and create the exact size that you want and need in your garden.

Outdoor Tables: The Legs

To allow you to create the perfect look for your garden furniture, we have made five different styles of legs available, for both table and benches, for a cohesive look. Each of our table and bench legs are self-descriptive, but are illustrated below:

A-Frame

V-Frame

Trapezium Frame

X-Frame

Square-Frame

The legs for our garden furniture are made from raw steel, and have a waterproof, black powder coated finish. Before we dispatch, we carefully clean each leg, to ensure no residue remains from manufacturing – we aren’t fans of accidental grease stains, and we’re sure you aren’t either!

Whichever type of legs you choose for your new outdoor table, all metalwork for our furniture is handmade from raw steel in England. Because our outdoor table legs are handmade from raw steel, there may be slight variation in colour and texture – but we think this adds to the aesthetic appeal, providing a more bespoke look.

How To Care For Your New Outdoor Table

The winters in the UK can be pretty harsh – even in coastal areas that aren’t quite as cold, wet and windy weather can cause damage that you won’t want. We recommend moving your new garden furniture indoors during the cold months, to protect it from unnecessary damage. This is normally not an easy process, but with the way the furniture is designed its easy to assemble & disassemble.

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👉 COVERS & ALL

In addition to storing it indoors through the winter, to keep your new outdoor benches and table in perfect condition, protected from the sun and the effects of the weather, we recommend that you apply a fresh coat of Osmo oil each year. Ideally you’d do this during the first days of spring, but as long as it is done annually, it will keep your outdoor furniture in great condition.

Outdoor Tables: The Matching Benches

Once you’ve established the right size table for the space you’re going to use it in, you’ll want to choose the right size benches to match your table. If your garden is a smaller space, or you prefer a neater look and want your benches to fit inside the table legs, then we recommend ordering benches that are 20cm shorter than the table.

As with all our furniture, your outdoor table, and your benches are customisable to your preference, and you can install the legs for both your table and your benches to give the look that you want.

What’s In The Box?

We always want to know exactly what we’re getting before we order! When you order outdoor furniture from us, in the package you will receive:

The wooden top, branded with our logo
A pair of box frame legs
A pair of 3mm steel fixing strips
Two sets of screws
A 3mm drill bit (to ensure a quality fixing)
A set of detailed instructions

You’ll need a drill to put your furniture together – which takes around 15 minutes, even for DIY novices! We choose not to pre-drill holes, so that you can install the legs exactly as you want them.

Sustainability At Ben Simpson Furniture

Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do at Ben Simpson Furniture. That’s why we use Scandinavian Joinery Pine sourced from Certified, 100% sustainably managed forests for all our products and we go the extra mile to recycle, or make use of our waste products in a responsible way. Our scrap wood is used for smaller products, or is turned into kindling for locals and businesses, and even our sawdust is reused for animal bedding at local farms.

In order to keep UK forests full, for every single tree we use, we plant another 10 – we talk about the One Tree Planted initiative further in this post but it really is as simple as it sounds.

To reduce our environmental impact further, our cardboard packaging is made from 75% recycled materials, and is 100% recyclable. While we’re still using a small amount of bubble wrap to protect our metal fixing straps, it makes up less than 1% of our order packaging, and we’re actively working towards finding a solution that doesn’t involve plastic. However, we do encourage our customers to reuse or recycle any bubble wrap that they receive from us, to help us further reduce the effects on the environment.

Final Thoughts

With COVID restrictions now (hopefully permanently) a thing of the past, and an extra bank holiday courtesy of the Jubilee weekend, we’re all looking forward to one of the greatest of British summers.

Getting your outdoor furniture sorted now means that you’re ready for all and every opportunity there is to get out and enjoy your garden. Whichever garden furniture you choose from us, we’re certain that you, and your family will love it – and we can’t wait for you to start tagging us on your Instagram posts, @bensimpsonfurniture!