Carla, I have never removed rust from garden furniture, but I just had to chime in. I love wrought iron garden benches! What color are you going to paint it? I love them in black, bronze, cream or sage green. They are a pleasure to have in the garden. I wish you many a happy day on your garden bench, Carla.

Ours are Durango doors and we love them. Not sure the gauge, but they are heavy and require a firm closing to be really closed. No problems with seasonal changes, but we're in Texas and I think the coldest it got this year was 29. Maintenance is cleaning the dog snot off the inside and the red clay off the outside. As for getting roasting hot in the summer, I don't recall it getting that hot last year, but we have a covered entry so that makes a difference. It faces the east so every morning the sun shines through brightly and where the dog takes up occupancy, hence the dog snot. Ours are scrolled iron with glass that opens in for cleaning. We paid $6495 without hardware for them and honestly I don't know how difficult they were to install because we built from 1300 miles away and weren't here. The builder didn't mention them being a problem. One thing I do know about them is that when we first moved it they didn't close perfectly and Durango sent a rep out the very next day to adjust the door and the weatherstripping. We are very pleased. I'll try to post a picture tomorrow if you'd like, or you could go to the durango door website. The model we ordered is called shoals.

My parents have wrought iron furniture and they just use a scrub brush and soap and water once a year and hose off in the spring. They also, about once per year, give it a light coat of rustoleum spray paint. They have been doing that for years and years and still looks as good as new. It's at least 35 years old.

I still have the aluminum patio furniture that I bought 17 yrs ago and it's held up extremely well. During strong winds the chairs are light enough to blow around the patio but they've never lifted off into orbit! When I know there's going to be a wind storm sometimes I'll push them over into a corner where they will be more protected, just so they don't bang into other things. Usually those types of storms are in the winter so if you are really worried about individual chairs moving just buy a patio cover that is large enough for the table and all the chairs around it. Last year I bought a pair of wrought iron chairs from Smith & Hawkins, they've got a black finish on them to protect the iron. S&H sells a protective cream for this type of furniture, it's expensive but if it keeps the chairs from rusting it will be worth it. As you know we get our rain in the winter and ours is a dry climate so I doubt wrought iron chairs are going to rust like they might in a more humid climate. I use Koveroos covers for all my outdoor furniture and when I know rain is coming I just throw it over them and remove when the sun is shining again. I haven't had these chairs long enough to know if they're going to rust or not but with these precautions I'm taking I'm pretty confident they'll hold up for many years. And if they do rust, well there are products to stop that from spreading. This may sound like a lot of maintenance but they're still a lot easier to keep clean than the white vinyl on my aluminum chairs. My neighbor bought a complete set of patio furniture from OSH a couple years ago, including a gazebo-like tent for overhead. I couldn't believe all that cost her only a couple hundred dollars. The problem with buying patio furniture from discount stores or hardware stores is the cushions. Better to find a set that doesn't require cushions because that's what desintegrates first. The original cushions that came with my set all faded very badly. To replace them would have cost a fortune but I know how to sew so I ordered a bolt of Sunbrella fabric from Calico Corners and made new ones. Unless the fabric says "Sunbrella" you're going to end up with faded fabric. Furniture sold by K-Mart,etc is not going to have Sunbrella fabric on it. In that case, chose a cushion that is light in color and definitely no prints. It's one thing to sew new cushions it's another when you have an unbrella that is also fading. Even though all the red & green color on our expensive Brown&Jordan unbrella had faded to a disgusting yellow I had no idea how to replace it so that one we pitched and I bought a new unbrella, this time in a solid color and using Sunbrella fabric.