Bringing Outdoor Furniture Inside for Winter and Holidays
Sometime around the second week of December the patio stops being a room and turns into a snow shelf. The chairs out there are still perfectly good, and meanwhile the dining room is about to be four seats short of the actual guest list. Bringing outdoor furniture inside for winter is not some styling trend somebody invented on a mood board. It is what happens when you run out of chairs and the garage is already full of the tree stand.
Why Your Patio Chair Outlives Your Dining Chair
Outdoor furniture gets built to a different standard than indoor furniture, and it has nothing to do with ambition. A patio chair has to survive hail, ultraviolet light, a freeze and thaw cycle every night in October, and whatever the dog decides to do to it in August. So the joinery is heavier. The fasteners are stainless or coated. The finish is an exterior grade oil or a powder coat instead of the thin lacquer that scratches when a fork gets too close.
Now compare that to the dining chairs most of us own. Those are engineered for a room where nothing ever happens. They are light because light ships cheap, and they are glued because glue is fast. Seat a two hundred pound uncle in one after a big meal, let him tip it back on two legs to tell a story, and you find out exactly what the glue thinks of that plan.
Our chairs sit on a Douglas fir base, get built from four to five pairs of retired skis apiece, and carry a 3 year warranty. Yup. That warranty exists because these things live outdoors on decks at nine thousand feet, which is a harder job than holding a person who is about to eat too much pie. The Signature Customizable Ski Chair runs $595 and measures 45 inches tall by 36 deep by 32 wide, with a ski binding cup holder built into the arm. There is no paint on that one at all. The original graphics on the skis are the entire design, and you tell us at checkout which brands or colors to hunt down.
So the durability argument is not marketing. It is just the reason a piece built for a Colorado deck shrugs off a holiday party that would leave your dining set wobbling by New Year’s.
Which Outdoor Pieces Actually Work Indoors
Not everything on the patio deserves an invitation. There is a real line between furniture that reads as intentional indoors and furniture that reads as an emergency. Learning where that line sits saves you an afternoon of dragging things around.
Wood and steel come inside well. Anything with a solid frame, a real finish and some visual weight will hold its own against a sofa. A ski bench, an Adirondack chair, a barrel side table, a hall tree, all of those look like furniture no matter which side of the door they are on. That is because they were designed with the same proportions your indoor pieces use. They just got a tougher coating.
What does not come inside well is anything that folds, anything with a strap seat, and anything plastic. Folding aluminum chairs telegraph “we ran out of chairs” from across the room. Slings and mesh look thin next to upholstery. And resin, no matter how convincing the wood grain molding is, always looks like resin under a lamp. If you would not leave the piece out when a neighbor stops by unannounced, do not seat your mother-in-law in it on Christmas Eve.
The middle category is cushions. Outdoor cushions are usually made of a quick drying foam wrapped in a fabric chosen for fade resistance, not for how it feels on bare legs. Indoors, that combination can feel a little stiff and a little slick. Swapping in a wool throw or a real pillow fixes it in about four seconds and costs nothing. Browse the ski chairs if you want a sense of what holds up in both rooms, since almost everything in there was built to sit outside and ends up living in a den anyway.
One practical note before you start dragging things around. Outdoor pieces are heavier than they look, because the same overbuilt frame that makes them last also makes them a two person carry. Measure the doorway rather than the furniture. A 36 inch deep chair goes through a 32 inch door at an angle without much drama, but it will not go through with a wreath still hanging on that door. Ask me how I know.
Start at the Door, Because That Is Where December Falls Apart
Every holiday problem in a mountain house starts at the entry. Twelve people arrive within about nine minutes of each other, all of them wearing boots that are wet, and all of them carrying a coat that has nowhere to go. The bench you keep meaning to buy is the piece that fixes this, and an outdoor built bench is the correct one because it does not care about slush.
The Entryway Boot Bench and Coat Rack Combo handles both jobs in a single footprint. It is $895, measures 44 inches tall by 36 deep by 60 wide, and is built from retired skis and snowboards hand painted in weatherproof exterior oils. Seat below for the boots, hooks above for the coats. The weatherproof part is the whole point once you understand that an entryway in January is basically outdoors with a roof on it.
If the coats are already spoken for and you only need a place to sit, the 3-Ski Narrow Bench is $399 and about 60 inches long by 18 deep by 17 tall with a 300 pound capacity. Three skis wide is a very specific size, and it is specific on purpose. That is the width that fits a hallway without turning it into an obstacle course, which anybody who has tried to squeeze past a too deep bench with a casserole dish will appreciate.
For the vertical half of the problem, a Ski Hall Tree at $491 stands on its own and gets made to your specs with four double looped hooks. It moves. That matters more than it sounds like it should, because the right spot for a coat rack in December is not the right spot for it in June.
Extra Seating for the People You Did Not Plan For
Here is the arithmetic nobody does until it is too late. You own six dining chairs. You are hosting eleven people. Two of those people are children who will not sit anywhere for longer than a minute, so really you need eight adult seats and a spot where the kids can pile up. This is a bench problem, not a chair problem.
Benches solve the count in a way chairs cannot. A 60 inch bench seats three adults comfortably and four if two of them are teenagers who do not take up much room yet. It also tucks under the table when the meal ends, which frees up floor space for the part of the evening where somebody insists on a card game. The snowboard and ski benches are all built for outdoor duty, so a spilled glass of red is a wipe, not an incident.
For the standing and leaning crowd, which in most houses means the group that will not leave the kitchen island no matter how nice the living room looks, a pair of Customizable Ski Bar Stools runs $891 for the set. They are normally 18 inches wide by 20 deep by 49 tall with a 29 inch seat height, and we will change the height for no extra charge if your counter is an odd one. Plenty of counters are.
Then there is the option for people whose ambitions run larger than a bench. A 2-person replica chairlift bench is $2,749, powder coated in whatever color you pick, and it is a handcrafted replica rather than a salvaged lift off a mountain. It seats two, it starts every conversation in the room, and it is the only piece of furniture I know of that people ask to be photographed sitting in. Put it against a wall in the living room in December and nobody talks about the tree.
Tables That Do Not Care About Your Coaster Rules
The coaster is a tell. If a house has coasters out, somebody in that house is anxious about a table, and that anxiety leaks into the party. Outdoor built tables remove the whole problem, because they were finished to survive weather. A wet glass is not a threat to them.
A Customizable Single Snowboard Coffee Table is $397 and runs roughly 58 by 18 by 14 inches, rated past 700 pounds. One retired snowboard makes the top, which is the honest version of the story. A board that wide is a table or a bench, and it doubles as both when the cousins show up and the seat count goes sideways again. We pull boards that actually measure the width you asked for and text you photos so you pick the one you want, and the stain can be matched to something you already own.
If you need something smaller to sit between two chairs, the Ski Coffee Table is $291 at 36 by 18 by 17 inches, hand painted on retired skis and rated to 300 pounds. It was sized specifically to fit between two Adirondack ski chairs without crowding either of them, which is the sort of dimension you only get right by building a lot of them and moving them around a room.
For the corner by an armchair, the Whiskey Barrel Side Table is $299 and measures 18 by 19 by 18 inches. The char and the darker stain from years of aging are still in the wood, which is why it reads warmer than the wine barrel version sitting next to it in the shop. It is outdoor safe, which in this context means you can set a cup of cocoa down on it and go answer the door.
One measurement is worth checking before anything comes inside. A coffee table should land within a couple of inches of your sofa seat height, and most sofas sit around 17 or 18 inches. That is why the numbers on these tables cluster where they do. A table that runs too tall makes the sofa feel sunken, and one that runs too short makes everybody lean forward to reach a glass. Guests never articulate why a room feels slightly off, but they feel it all evening.
Making It Look Deliberate Instead of Accidental
There is a version of this that goes badly. You drag in four patio chairs, line them along a wall, and the room reads like a waiting area at a tire shop. The fix is not expensive and it is not complicated. It is mostly about committing.
Give the pieces a rug. A rug under an outdoor chair does more work than anything else you can do, because it tells the eye that this arrangement was planned. Wool or jute both do the job. Second, mix rather than segregate. One ski chair pulled up next to the sofa in a conversation group looks intentional. Four of them in a row looks like overflow parking.
Third, add soft goods and stop worrying about matching. A wool blanket over an arm, a couple of pillows that are not from the outdoor set, and the chair stops reading as patio equipment. This is also where the seasonal stuff earns its keep, because greenery draped across a ski bench looks great and greenery draped across a folding chair looks like a hostage situation.
Fourth, hang something. Wall pieces do more for the “this was on purpose” impression than any amount of furniture rearranging, and they cost less. A set of antique snowshoes at $344 runs 32 to 42 inches long and 9 to 12 wide, and mounted above a bench they pull the whole corner together. Sizes vary a little because they are genuinely old, which is the point.
Last, be honest about scale. A room can carry one big statement piece and a couple of quiet ones. Two statement pieces fight, and the room loses. If the chairlift bench comes inside, the mural bench probably stays in the garage until January.
And leave a gap. The instinct when a room fills up with extra seating is to shove everything against the walls, which is the single move that guarantees the place looks like a rental. Pull the chairs a few inches off the baseboard and angle them slightly toward each other instead. It costs nothing, takes about a minute, and it is the whole difference between a seating group and a row.
Clean It Before It Touches the Rug
Nobody enjoys this part and everybody skips it, then wonders why the living room smells faintly like a dog that has not lived there in three years. Outdoor furniture picks up things you cannot see. Ten minutes of prep saves a lot of complaining later.
Start with a dry brush. A stiff bristle brush knocks off the pollen, spider webbing and grit that collects in joints and under seat slats. Do this outside, obviously, or you have just relocated the problem. Get into the corners where the arm meets the back, since that is where everything accumulates.
Then wash with warm water and a small amount of dish soap. Not a pressure washer. A pressure washer will drive water into joints and lift finish, and on a hand painted piece it can take the artwork with it. A sponge and a bucket are correct here. Rinse and let the piece dry all the way through, which in cold weather takes longer than you think. A day in a heated garage is not too much.
Check the feet before it goes on hardwood. Grit embeds itself in the bottom of a leg over a season outside, and it becomes sandpaper the first time somebody scoots the chair. Felt pads cost about four dollars and prevent a repair that costs considerably more. While you are down there, put a hand on every joint and give it a wiggle. If something has loosened over the summer, a screwdriver now beats a surprise during dessert.
One more thing about hand painted pieces. Skip the household cleaners with solvents or citrus oils. They can haze an exterior oil finish, and the haze does not come back off. Soap and water is genuinely the whole method, which is the answer people are always disappointed to hear.
When It Makes More Sense to Buy Than to Haul
Sometimes the honest answer is that the patio set you own is a patio set, it is never going to look right by the tree, and hauling it in is just moving an eyesore to a warmer location. That is fine. It is also how a lot of people end up buying a piece that lives inside year round and never goes back out.
If the piece is going to be a gift, the price range here is wider than most people expect. The ski gifts sorted by budget page starts well under a hundred dollars and climbs from there, so you can shop the amount rather than the category. At the low end, a pair of wall mounted ski bottle openers is $99 for the set with a magnetic catch, so the cap does not end up under the fridge.
And then there is the $65 Ski Pole Plunger, which is a retired ski pole turned into the handle of a plunger that genuinely works, grip and all. You pick the color. It is the only thing in the bathroom anybody has ever commented on, and it has ended more than one awkward silence at a party. Make of that what you will.
If the occasion is a gathering rather than a gift, the apres ski pieces for entertaining collection is the one to browse, since it is organized around the part of the day when everybody is inside with a drink and nobody wants to talk about the snow report anymore.
The one thing to plan for is time. Everything is built to order in Manitou Springs, Colorado, from real retired skis and snowboards, and made to order runs about two to four weeks. December 20th is not the day to start that clock. If you are cutting it close and want to know what can actually ship, call 303.775.7273 and ask. Somebody there will tell you straight rather than take the order and hope.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will outdoor furniture damage my hardwood floors?
Only if you bring it in dirty. Grit works its way into the bottom of a leg over a season outdoors and turns into sandpaper the first time the piece gets scooted. Brush the feet, wash the piece with soap and water, let it dry all the way through, and stick felt pads on every contact point before it goes near a finished floor.
How many skis does it take to build one of these chairs?
One Adirondack ski chair takes four to five pairs of skis. A matched set of two takes eight to ten pairs, which is worth knowing if you are sending in your own skis and wondering whether you have enough. A snowboard chair needs at least three boards. A single snowboard, on the other hand, is exactly the right amount of material for a bench or a coffee table.
Are the ski lift benches real chairlifts from a resort?
Almost always no. The powder coated two and three person lift benches and swings are handcrafted replicas built in our shop, not salvaged hardware, and that is how they are listed. A handful of pieces are genuine retired lifts, and when that is the case the product name says so directly. We do not invent mountain provenance for a bench.
Can I get a logo on a piece for a business or a gift?
Yes. The logo goes on as a decal or an applique, never as paint. That keeps the edges crisp and the colors accurate, which hand painting a logo cannot reliably do at furniture scale. Call 303.775.7273 with the artwork and somebody will tell you what will work at the size you need.
