Oil Me Up!

So it's that time of year again when the sun comes out for three days in a row, and I bake outside on the balcony with a good book while Kevin stays inside swearing at his X-Box.  Yay summer!

Our balcony flooring survived the long winter and rainy (so rainy!) spring, but was looking a bit duller than this time last year. 

We popped to Homebase to look for some oil suitable for outdoor use and the cheapest they had was their own brand Teak Oil, less than a fiver.  This made us very happy, because a few weeks ago we spent about £15 on oil for the kitchen worktop (post coming soon!) and we were expecting to pay a lot more for the outdoor stuff.  Anyway, this Teak Oil says it's suitable for using on outdoor furniture, and we sit on the floor all the time so it totally counts.

It said to apply it on a day when it wouldn't be raining (hah, why are they selling it here then?!) so after a week or so we had fine weather forecast for a couple of days, but it wasn't so sunny that we'd be missing precious outdoor time too much. 

I whacked some of the oil in a jug, grabbed probably the only clean paintbrush we have, and got to work.

Check out my giant thumb, it's like the size of three fingers!

You can see the difference it made immediately:

The oil smelt delicious to me, but I do really like fumey smells, and Kevin didn't like the smell so I shut the door while I was working until I got to the last bit.  It only took about half an hour, if that, and then it looked all lovely and slick and shiny.

I do still need to do a small patch where I put the plant pots out of the way, but other than that, behold now the oil has soaked in and done its job:

This will hopefully last another year.  It does say to do it every six months, but our balcony is quite sheltered and I'm quite lazy.

Also, after the passion flower we had on the trellis got frosted to death, I bought a shiny new clematis, and it's still alive and growing strong! 

It keeps trying to grow towards the door, and I think it wants to eat us, but that might just be be my imagination after reading this Kenneth Ireland book as a child...