Custom Backyard Furniture Made to Order for a Yard You Use
The chair on your deck right now was designed for nobody in particular. It shipped flat in a box, it matched a photo taken in a rented backyard in California, and after three winters the arms have gone the color of old newspaper. Somewhere in there you quit sitting in it, which is a strange thing to admit about furniture you paid for.
What “Custom” Actually Means When a Person Builds the Thing
Custom is one of those words that got worn smooth by overuse. A big box store will call a sofa custom because you picked gray instead of beige. That is not custom. That is a menu.
Custom backyard furniture made to order means somebody reads what you asked for, pulls the right materials off the rack, and builds the piece for you specifically. In our shop that starts with retired skis. One Adirondack ski chair takes four to five pairs, so before a single cut gets made, somebody has gone through the pile looking for graphics that work together and topsheets that have aged the way you would want them to age. A set of two chairs takes eight to ten pairs. That is a real constraint, and it shapes what we can promise you.
The rest of the chair follows the same logic. The base is Douglas Fir, cut and assembled here in Manitou Springs, Colorado. The paint is high quality exterior oil, the same stuff that has to survive hail in June and forty below wind chill in January. The cup holder is a repurposed ski binding, which is exactly the kind of detail nobody asks for and everybody points at.
So when we say made to order, we mean the piece did not exist before you called. There is a two to four week window on most builds for that reason. If you need something sooner, we keep a shelf of finished pieces in Ready to Ship, and those go out the door fast. Everything else gets built once you say go.
Is that slower than clicking buy on a marketplace? Yes. Does the thing last longer than the marketing copy? Also yes.
Start With How You Actually Use the Yard, Not How You Wish You Did
Most backyard plans fail at the same place. People design for the version of themselves who hosts twenty people on a Saturday, when the truth is they sit outside alone with coffee four mornings a week and have three friends over twice a summer.
Be honest about the four mornings. That is the use case that matters, and it is the one that tells you what to buy. If you drink your coffee facing east because that is where the sun comes over the ridge, you need two chairs pointed east, not a nine piece sectional pointed at the grill.
Walk the yard at the hour you would actually be in it. Notice where the wind comes from, where the shade lands at four in the afternoon, and where the ground is flat enough that a chair does not rock on one leg. Then count seats. Two chairs and a small table handle the vast majority of real backyard life, and the table part can be as simple as the Sunset Mountain Art Ski Top Side Table at $325, which holds two coffees and a phone and nothing else, which is all it needs to hold. The rest of what we build to set a drink on is over in Tables. A pair around a fire pit handles the rest. Everything past that is a party you throw twice a year, and folding chairs exist for that.
The other question worth asking is what you want to look at from the seat. This matters more than people expect. Our chairs get built with a hand painted mural on the seat back, which means the chair is also the view for anybody standing in the yard looking back at it. Point the chairs at the mountains, and the mural points at your house. Both directions get something.
Once you know the number of seats, the direction they face and the hours you sit in them, the buying part gets easy. That is roughly the opposite of how most people shop for a patio, and it is why most patios end up with furniture nobody uses.
Why Old Skis Make Better Outdoor Furniture Than New Lumber
A ski is engineered to take a beating from weather at altitude for a decade. Wood, fiberglass, steel edges, a sealed topsheet with UV stable graphics printed under a clear layer. Somebody spent real money making that sandwich survive moguls, salt, sun and freeze thaw cycles.
Then the bindings wear out or the owner moves on, and the whole thing goes in a landfill or a garage rafter. It seems like a waste of good engineering, so we put those skis to work sitting still instead of going fast.
The practical result is a seat back and seat slats that do not swell, warp or split the way plain lumber does. The graphics do not need refinishing because they were never a finish, they were laminated in at the factory. A ski from 1998 on a chair in a Denver backyard still looks like a ski from 1998, which is the point.
The Douglas Fir base is the part that does the structural work. It is stiff, it takes exterior oil paint well, and it holds a fastener. Rated to 400 lb capacity, so you can sit two people in one chair if the evening goes that direction. Comfortable for people from 3 feet to 6 feet 10, which covers grandkids through the tallest guy at the party.
Overall the chair stands 45 inches tall by 36 deep and 32 wide. Some builds go up to 55 inches tall if you want the seat back to read from across the yard. Every chair and every bench can be built as a rocker for $75 more, riding on repurposed oak wine barrel slats. If barrel wood is the look you are after on its own, that is a whole separate line in Barrel Chairs and Sets, built from reclaimed oak whiskey and wine barrel staves.
Three year hassle free warranty. Yup.
Who Orders Custom Work, and What They Are Really Buying
After a couple thousand of these, some patterns are hard to miss.
The largest group is people who moved to Colorado, fell hard for a specific mountain, and want it on something. They order the Customized Mountain Mural Adirondack Ski Chair and name a peak. Sometimes it is a famous one. More often it is the ridge they can see from the kitchen window, or the run where a kid finally linked turns without crying.
Second group is people buying for somebody else and trying to say something specific. A retirement. A fiftieth. A memorial for a skier who is gone, with the mountain they loved on the seat back. Those calls are quiet and careful, and we take them seriously. There is a whole category for that kind of work under Sentimental Pieces.
Third group is businesses. Realtors, breweries, ski shops, resorts, HOAs. They want their color and their logo on a chair sitting out front where everybody sees it. Worth being clear about how that works, because it gets misunderstood: a logo is never painted. The background gets hand painted in exterior oils, and the logo goes on as a logo decal floated onto that painted background. Aluminum and plastic appliques are the alternatives when the logo needs more presence or a longer service life. Branded pricing gets quoted on a call, because it depends on the art, the quantity and the finish.
The common thread across all three is that nobody is buying a place to sit. Nobody needs another place to sit. They are buying a thing that means something and happens to hold 400 pounds.
That is the honest pitch. If you just want seating, a hardware store has seating, and it costs less.
Where a Custom Piece Actually Belongs
Decks and patios are the obvious answer, and they are still the most common. A pair flanking a door reads as intentional. A pair angled toward a view reads as an invitation. Three or more around a fire pit is the arrangement people keep sending us photos of, usually taken at dusk with somebody holding a beer in the ski binding cup holder.
Front porches are underrated. A ski chair on a front porch in a mountain town is a small act of local citizenship. Neighbors comment. Delivery drivers comment. Everybody comments.
Cabins and short term rentals are their own category. Owners tell us the chairs show up in guest photos more than anything else on the property, which is a real return on a piece of furniture. If you own a rental, the mural on the seat back is doing marketing work for you every time somebody posts.
Indoors works better than people expect. A ski chair in a mudroom, a basement bar or a mountain condo living room looks deliberate rather than out of place, and the exterior oil finish means a wet jacket or a spilled drink is a non issue. We keep a run of pieces meant for inside under Indoor Decor and Furniture.
The one place to be careful is a spot with no clearance behind the seat back. These chairs lean. That slanted seat and reclined back are what makes them comfortable, and they need about three feet of depth to sit right. Jam one against a railing with six inches to spare and you have bought a very expensive plant stand.
Also consider snow. In Colorado, a chair on a north facing patio will spend February buried. That is fine, they are built for it, but you will enjoy the piece more if it lives where you can see it in winter.
What You Can Change, and What You Cannot
Here is the honest menu.
You can pick the mountain. Any range, any peak, any ridgeline, painted by hand in exterior oils on the seat back. You can pick the season the mural shows, so the same peak comes out as a summer green or a January blue. You can pick the sky, and sunset skies are far and away the most requested.
You can pick the base color, and you can ask for specific ski brands or ski colors when we have them in stock. That last one is a soft yes rather than a hard yes, because we build from what actually comes in. If you want a specific brand and we do not have it, we will tell you rather than substitute quietly.
You can add a name, a date, a set of coordinates or a short line of text. You can go to a rocker for $75 more on oak wine barrel slats. You can go big, and by big we mean the oversized builds in Huge XXL Chairs, which are a photo op more than a chair and sell exactly as well as that suggests.
You can order matching pieces. A chair plus an ottoman, two chairs plus a table, a full arrangement out of Patio Sets. The one people land on most is the Colorado Ski Chairs, Side Tables, and Ottomans Set of 6 at $1,881, which is two chairs, two side tables and two ottomans and covers a whole patio in one order. Remember the ski math when you do: a set of two chairs takes eight to ten pairs, so larger sets take longer to source.
What you cannot do is get a painted logo, because that is not how logos work on a hand painted piece. You also cannot get us to invent provenance. If a piece is a replica of something, we say replica. That comes up most with lift hardware, and we would rather lose a sale than tell you a story that is not true.
If your idea is not on this list, it probably still works. Call and describe it. Most of what ends up in Custom Designs started as somebody saying “this is going to sound weird, but.”
Living With It Through Four Colorado Seasons
Good news first. These pieces are built to stay outside. Exterior oil paint, sealed ski topsheets and a Douglas Fir base handle sun, snow, rain and the temperature swing you get at 6,000 feet. You do not need to haul anything into a garage in October.
Spring is the season that does the most damage, and it is not the snow. It is the freeze thaw cycle plus a month of mud. Set the chair on a flat surface, gravel or pavers or decking, so the feet are not sitting in standing water for weeks. That is the single most useful thing you can do for the life of the piece.
Summer is UV. High altitude sun is brutal on everything, which is why the paint is exterior oil rather than a house paint or a stain. If the chair lives in full exposure at 9,000 feet, a light coat of clear exterior UV sealer every couple of years buys you a lot of color. Down in Denver or on the Front Range, most people never bother and the finish holds fine.
Fall is the easy one. Wipe the pine needles and aspen leaves out of the slat gaps before the first real snow, because organic matter sitting wet against wood all winter is how rot starts anywhere.
Winter, honestly, do nothing. Snow sits on the chair, the chair does not care. Do not chip ice off with a metal shovel, because you will take paint with it. A broom is enough. If you want the seat usable at Christmas, a cheap outdoor cover works, or just brush it off when you want to sit.
Cleaning is mild soap and water and a soft brush. No pressure washer. A pressure washer will drive water into every joint and strip paint at the same time, which is an impressive amount of damage for something that feels productive to use.
Three years of hassle free warranty backs the build itself, and past that these have a long track record of aging well. We see photos of chairs from a decade ago that still look right.
The Gift Angle, Because Half of These Are Gifts
Roughly half our custom orders are bought for somebody else, and gift buyers have a different problem than buyers shopping for themselves. They are not choosing furniture. They are trying to prove they paid attention.
That is what a named mountain does. Anybody can buy a nice chair. Only somebody who listened knows that it has to be Wolf Creek and not Wolf Creek Pass, or that the run matters more than the resort. When the recipient sees the specific ridgeline they talk about, the gift has already worked before anyone sits down.
The occasions repeat. Retirements top the list, especially for people leaving a career and moving somewhere with a view. Then milestone birthdays, housewarmings for a first mountain place, and wedding gifts from a group where a set of two chairs makes more sense than a single. Anniversaries where the mural shows the peak from the honeymoon.
Practical advice for gift buyers. Order early. Made to order means two to four weeks, and December is the month that window gets tight, so a Christmas piece wants to be ordered by early November. If you are late, the Ready to Ship shelf exists for exactly that reason, and there is a broader run of smaller items in Gift Items when a full chair is more than the occasion calls for.
One more thing that people find useful. If you want the gift to be a surprise but you are worried about getting the details wrong, call us and talk it through. It costs nothing and we have talked a lot of people out of the wrong mountain.
How Ordering Actually Works
No mystery here, and no funnel.
You can order straight off the site. Pick the piece, pick the options, check out. For a straightforward build like the Customized Mountain Mural Adirondack Ski Chair, that is genuinely all it takes. You tell us the mountain in the order notes and we go. If a hand painted peak is more chair than the yard calls for, the Signature Customizable Ski Chair starts at $595 and lets you name brands and colors instead of a mural, which is the same chair underneath.
If the idea is more involved, call 303.775.7273 and describe it. That is the only number, and somebody who builds these will be on the other end of it. Branded work always goes through a call, because logo decals, aluminum appliques and quantity all move the price and there is no honest way to put that on a product page.
Timeline is two to four weeks for most made to order pieces. Complicated murals and multi piece sets run toward the long end. Ready to Ship pieces go out much faster. We will tell you where your build sits rather than making you guess.
Shipping is free to the lower 48 on most chairs, and pieces arrive assembled or close to it. Across Colorado we do local delivery ourselves, which is the option people forget exists. If you are in the state, ask.
Payment, warranty and returns are boring and that is on purpose. Three year hassle free warranty on the build. If something shows up wrong, call the same number and a human sorts it out.
Everything gets built in Manitou Springs, Colorado, by people who ski. That is not a marketing line, it is just the staffing situation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many pairs of skis go into one custom chair?
One Adirondack ski chair takes four to five pairs of retired skis, and a matching set of two takes eight to ten pairs. That sourcing is part of why made to order builds run two to four weeks instead of shipping same day.
Can you paint my company logo on the chair?
A logo is never painted. We hand paint the background in exterior oils and then float your logo on as a logo decal, with aluminum or plastic appliques available as alternatives. Branded pricing is quoted on a call at 303.775.7273 because it depends on the artwork, the finish and the quantity.
Will custom outdoor furniture survive a Colorado winter outside?
Yes. The exterior oil paint, sealed ski topsheets and Douglas Fir base are built to live outdoors year round, and the chairs carry a 3 year hassle free warranty. Brush snow off with a broom rather than a metal shovel and skip the pressure washer.
How long does a made to order piece take, and what does shipping cost?
Most custom builds take two to four weeks, with complex murals and multi piece sets at the longer end. Most chairs ship free to the lower 48, and we deliver locally across Colorado.
Can I get a rocker instead of a standard base?
Every chair and bench can be built as a rocker for $75 more, riding on repurposed oak wine barrel slats. Add it as an option when you order or mention it on the phone.
Build the One You Would Actually Sit In
If you have a mountain in mind, or a color, or a logo, or an idea that sounds weird until you say it out loud, call 303.775.7273 and let us hear it. You can also start from the Customized Mountain Mural Adirondack Ski Chair and name your peak, or browse the rest of what we build in Custom Designs and Adirondack Ski Chairs. Two to four weeks from now, there is a chair on your deck that was made for exactly one yard.
