Dealing With Three Major Threats to Stored Wood Furniture

Do you know that wood furniture is delicate in storage? It may look strong and indestructible in your living room or bedroom, but it faces several threats in storage. Here are three examples of such threats:

Moisture

Moisture is probably the biggest threat to stored wood furniture; it can damage the wood in several ways, for example:

• Moisture causes wood to rot
• Moisture encourages mold growth
• Some rodents and insects prefer moist places to completely dry places
• Moisture causes wood to crack and warp

Therefore, you need to keep your stored furniture moisture-free for the duration of its storage. A good way of doing this is to cover up the furniture with fabric—not with plastic as that would cause condensation and damage the furniture. It's also a good idea to store furniture off the ground to maximize ventilation and avoid moisture accumulation. 

Insects

Some insects and rodents feed on wood while others burrow in it. Examples of insects and rodents that can damage wood in storage include drywood termites, powder post beetles, carpenter ants, and rats.

Here are some of the measures that may keep insects and rodents away from your stored furniture:

• Cover up the furniture with cardboard to keep animals away.
• Line the floor with a plastic sheet so that animals can't tunnel through the floor and damage the furniture.
• Treat the furniture so that it can repel pests; for example, olive oil, vinegar, and aloe vera treatments can keep termites at bay.

Temperature Fluctuations

Lastly, you also have to worry about temperature fluctuations. Extremely cold temperatures are bad for stored wood because makes the wood pliable; wood tends to contract when the temperature falls. When the individual wood pieces in a furniture assembly contract, they adopt new shapes by warping and getting pulled in different directions. The effect is more pronounced in assembled furniture since the movements of the individual pieces are restricted.

High temperatures cause wood to expand, and the expansion can also cause the same effects contractions; the wood may distort, crack or pull out of their joints. The only way to prevent temperature-related damage is to control the temperature of the storage unit.

As you can see, storing wood furniture is a complicated affair. Furniture isn't the kind of thing you should store in your basement. The best thing to do is to store it in a climate-controlled room, which you can easily get at a self-storage facility.