Opening your cottage after a Canadian winter is a ritual — and your furniture needs attention before you settle in for the season. A few hours of inspection and reconditioning now prevents expensive repairs later. Here's what to do, room by room.
The traditional Ontario and Quebec cottage opening is Victoria Day weekend — the third Monday in May. It's so ingrained in cottage culture that "the May long weekend" is almost universally understood to mean cottage-opening weekend in those provinces. That said, timing varies by region and the previous winter's severity:
Regardless of your region, the furniture opening checklist is the same. The only difference is how much punishment your furniture absorbed over winter — unheated properties in extreme cold (-30°C or lower) are harder on wood and joinery than milder coastal climates.
Before you move anything, make a quick walk-through with this checklist. You're looking for problems that developed over winter — things that were fine in October and may have changed by May.
Log and rustic furniture is most vulnerable to checking during the winter heating cycle — if you ran any heat during the winter, or if the property had repeated freeze-thaw cycles, new surface checks may have appeared. Walk slowly around each piece and look at the log surfaces with angled light (a flashlight works well).
Surface checks — hairline or shallow cracks running along the grain — are normal and not a structural concern. They're the wood's response to moisture changes over the season. What to flag for follow-up: any checks that appear to have widened to more than ¼ inch, any new checks running through or near a joint area, or any checks that extend into the end grain of a post or leg. See our detailed guide to checking and cracking in log furniture for assessment guidance.
Sit on every chair. Push on every bed frame. Wiggle every table. You're testing the mortise-and-tenon joints that hold log furniture together. Winter temperature cycles are hard on joinery — wood expands and contracts repeatedly, and glue bonds that were tight last fall can loosen over winter.
A loose joint you catch now is a repair job. A loose joint you don't catch will be a broken joint by the end of the cottage season — likely when someone sits down in a chair enthusiastically or when a child bounces on the bed. Catching it early is the difference between a $50 re-glue and a full joint rebuild.
If you find a wobbling chair or table, the fix is usually straightforward: disassemble the joint if possible, clean off old glue, apply fresh wood glue or two-part epoxy, reassemble and clamp for 24 hours. For a post-and-rail system that can't easily be disassembled, an injection of Loctite 5-Minute Epoxy into the gap with a syringe, followed by clamping, often works.
If your cottage was unheated over winter and you're in a humid climate (Great Lakes corridor, West Coast, Atlantic), mould can develop on furniture surfaces where airflow is limited. Check the undersides of tables, the inside corners of drawer openings, under seat cushions, and anywhere where two surfaces sit close together.
Grey or black staining combined with a musty smell indicates mould. Surface mould on wood can be treated: wipe down with a 10:1 water-to-bleach solution, let dry completely (ideally two or three days with good ventilation), then lightly sand and refinish. Don't use bleach on oiled finishes — it will strip the oil. Instead, use a commercial mould cleaner formulated for wood surfaces, available at Home Hardware and Rona.
Deep mould — wood that looks grey throughout, or posts/rails that feel soft when you press with a thumbnail — is a structural problem and may require component replacement.
If you stored patio or deck furniture outdoors over winter (covered or uncovered), inspect the following before you set it up for the season:
Even furniture that passes the inspection may need some love after a winter in an unheated or partially heated cottage. Two tasks cover most reconditioning needs:
An unheated cottage in Canadian winter is extremely dry inside. Low temperatures hold minimal humidity, and log furniture that was oiled last fall may have released much of that oil into the dry air by spring. When you open the cottage, look for surfaces that appear chalky, dull, or faded compared to how they looked last fall.
Dry log furniture in spring is ready to absorb oil quickly — application is fast and the wood soaks it up immediately. Apply Danish oil, pure tung oil, or a hardwax oil like Rubio Monocoat with a cloth, let it soak for 15–20 minutes, then wipe off any excess. The surface will look visibly richer and darker within minutes. Furniture is usable within 24 hours.
This is also your opportunity to do the annual maintenance re-oil recommended for oil-finished log furniture. Spring, when the wood is at its driest and most absorbent, is the ideal time to do it.
Check all visible lag bolts, carriage bolts, and screws on log furniture. Winter cycling loosens hardware. Tighten anything that has play — but use a socket wrench or hand screwdriver, not a power drill. Over-tightening log tenon hardware is a common mistake: the log tenon can split if you torque too hard. Hand-tight plus a quarter turn is enough. If a bolt keeps coming loose, the wood around it may have compressed — a drop of threadlocker (Loctite Blue) on the thread will hold it.
When you're positioning patio and deck furniture for the season, a few practices protect the furniture from damage over summer:
When you first open the cottage after winter, the air inside is typically stale and carries moisture that built up during shoulder-season temperature swings. Before you start reconditioning furniture, ventilate first.
Open all windows and doors. If the weather allows, let the cottage breathe for several hours before you close it up. This flushes the winter moisture out of the structure and the furniture.
If you have a dehumidifier at the cottage, running it during the first week of the season pulls out a significant amount of winter moisture. This is particularly valuable for cottages in the Muskoka, Haliburton, or Georgian Bay corridors where humidity from the lakes is high. Target indoor humidity of 40–55% for log furniture health — the same range that's comfortable for occupants.
High humidity is harder on log furniture than dry conditions: it promotes mould, causes checking when the furniture dries out again, and swells wood against joinery. The time to get humidity under control is week one of the season.
If you're upgrading or adding to your cottage furniture this spring, the high-use pieces that most frequently need replacement are coffee tables (high-wear surfaces), accent chairs (often underspecified for outdoor use originally), and outdoor loungers. Log coffee tables made from pine or fir slabs are the most durable replacement option — a solid slab top resists the spills and abuse of cottage use better than fine furniture. See our log coffee table guide for options, or browse log bed frames if the cottage bedroom is due for an upgrade.
Spring is also when Kijiji listings are highest — see our Kijiji buying guide if you're considering used furniture to stretch your budget.