The Adirondack Ski Chair for a Fall Deck, Aspens Included
The aspens went yellow sometime last week while you were not paying attention, and now the light on your deck at 6pm is doing something it only does for about eleven days a year. You have a coffee, a fleece and nowhere decent to sit. The plastic chair that got you through July is out there fading toward gray, one leg still holding a memory of the time somebody stood on it. Fall is short. This is a solvable problem.
Why Fall Is the Season That Exposes Cheap Outdoor Seating
Summer forgives bad furniture. Everybody is up and moving, the grill needs tending, the kids are in the sprinkler, and nobody sits in one place long enough to notice that the chair is unpleasant. Fall does not work that way. Fall is a sitting season.
You go outside in October to be still. Coffee in the morning before the frost burns off, a beer at 5pm when the light gets long, a fire pit at 8pm with a blanket over your knees. Those are all sitting activities, and they last 40 minutes instead of four. Forty minutes is exactly how long it takes to discover that a chair is badly designed.
Cheap outdoor seating also picks fall to fail in. The resin has been baking since May and has gone brittle. The cushions took on water in August and never fully dried. The webbing chair from the hardware store has developed the sag that means next spring is its last. There is a reason the curb fills up with patio furniture in September.
So there is a case for buying a real chair right now instead of in April. You get to use it through the best sitting season of the year, it is already in place when the first snow lands, and you are not competing with every other person in the state for the same delivery window in May. Buying outdoor furniture in autumn feels backward and is actually the smart order of operations.
A chair that solves fall properly needs three things. It has to be comfortable without cushions, because cushions and October rain are not friends. It has to be able to sleep outside. And it should be worth looking at when nobody is sitting in it, since an empty deck chair in November is a view from your kitchen window for six months.
Where an Adirondack Ski Chair Starts Life
Before it is a chair it is somebody’s skis. Four to five pairs of them, retired for one of the usual reasons: outgrown, outdated, delaminated, or replaced because a shop had a sale nobody could refuse. A set of two chairs takes eight to ten pairs, which gives you a sense of how much old gear moves through the shop.
We build in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Skis come to us from shops clearing out back rooms, from swap sales, from garage cleanouts, and from customers who mail in their own pairs because throwing them away felt wrong and they could never explain why.
The top sheets stay exactly as they are. That is the whole visual idea. Ski graphics from the last several decades are loud and strange and printed far better than furniture ever is, and lining them up across a seat back gives you a band of color that a factory could not reproduce if it tried. It is also why no two chairs look identical, which people either love immediately or take about ten seconds to come around to.
If you learned on straight skis and still have a pair leaning in the corner of the garage, that pair can be in the chair. Customers send us the skis they learned on, a parent’s skis, or the pair from the season they want to hold onto. Take a look at the sentimental builds to see what that turns into. It beats storing them behind the snowblower for another decade.
How the Chair Is Made, and What It Is Made Of
The frame is Douglas Fir. Stiff, straight grained, and content to hold a fastener outdoors for a very long time. The skis provide the seat back and the personality, the fir provides the structure, and between them you get a chair rated to 400 lb.
Dimensions are 45 inches tall by 36 inches deep by 32 inches wide, with some builds running 55 inches tall. That geometry is comfortable for people from 3 feet to 6 feet 10, which covers a grandkid and the tallest person you know at the same picnic. The seat is deep enough to lean back into without the perched feeling you get from most modern patio chairs.
There is a cup holder built into the arm from an actual ski binding. It still clamps down hard, just on a drink now. It is the detail every single visitor to your deck will pick up and fiddle with, and we have made peace with that.
Finish is high quality exterior oil paint, brushed on, weatherproof and slow curing. Murals are hand painted in those same exterior oils, one chair at a time. Not a print, not a wrap, not a decal pretending to be paint. It is why the color is still there after six Colorado summers. Every chair carries a 3 year hassle free warranty. Yup. Nothing to register and nothing to mail in.
If you want it to rock, the rocker conversion is $75 more and gets built on repurposed oak wine barrel slats. Same barrel stock logic behind our barrel chair sets, which come from reclaimed oak whiskey and wine barrel staves.
The Aspen Mural, and Why Hand Painting Is Worth the Trouble
Anyone who has walked through an aspen grove after dark understands why this particular design works. The trunks go pale and vertical, the leaves hang onto the last of the light, and everything behind them disappears into nothing. It is one of the few things in nature that already looks composed.
The Ski Chair Night Aspen Tree Mural is our attempt at that grove. Our artists paint the bark scars and the leaf edges by hand, one chair at a time, because that layered depth is not something you can achieve any other way on a curved seat back. A printed version would flatten it out and you would know instantly.
The dark palette makes it an unusually easy chair to place. It sits fine against log siding, stucco or a stained deck, and it does not pick a fight with whatever else you already have out there. That matters more than people expect. A loud chair on a busy porch is a chair you eventually move.
Fall buyers regularly ask us to push the leaves further into gold, and we are happy to do it. If you would rather have the grove in daylight, the Aspen Tree Sunset Mural Adirondack Ski Chair is $695 and trades the night sky for the last hour of light. Some ask for a name or a date painted low on a trunk, small enough that guests never find it and the owner always knows exactly where it is. Ask for whatever version of the grove is in your head. That is what hand painting is for.
Custom paint work carries additional fees depending on complexity, and we tell you the number before anything starts. Nobody at this shop enjoys a surprise invoice, including us.
Who Buys These, and What They Say About Why
The core buyer is someone in their fifties who learned on straight skis, has a deck or a fire pit, and has finally lost patience with replacing patio furniture every three years. They are not shopping for a bargain. They are shopping for the last chair.
Cabin and mountain home owners are close behind. Their requirement is simple: it has to survive being left alone from October to May with nobody checking on it. A chair that needs a cover, a cushion closet or a winter migration into the garage is not a serious candidate for that house.
A lot of buyers order two. One for each side of a fire pit, which is the arrangement that gets used most, and it is why patio sets exist as a category. A set of two chairs takes eight to ten pairs of skis, in case you are supplying your own and doing the math. The Aspen Leaf Night Sky Mural Ski Rocking Chairs are $1497 for the pair and carry the grove across both backs, which is the version people order once they have seen one chair in person.
Then there are the gift buyers, who are more numerous in fall than at any other point in the year except December. They have figured out that ordering in October means the piece exists by the holidays instead of becoming a printed photo in an envelope on Christmas morning.
And there is a steady stream of people who simply saw one on somebody’s porch in Colorado, could not stop thinking about it, and eventually found us. That is most of our marketing, honestly. A chair on a deck outperforms an ad.
Where It Belongs Once It Shows Up
Facing the view is the first rule and the one people break. If your deck has a direction worth looking at, point the chair at it, even if that means the chair has its back to the house and the arrangement looks a little odd from the kitchen. Nobody has ever regretted facing the mountains.
The fire pit is the second placement and the most social. Two chairs across from each other, a bench on the third side, and the fourth side left open so people can wander in. Our ski benches pair with the chairs on purpose, so a mural can carry across both pieces if you want the set to read as one idea. The Moose among the Aspens snowboard bench is $595 and handles that third side without walling off the fire.
The front porch is a quieter option and a good one. A single chair by the door gets used far more than the theory suggests, mostly for the ten minutes of sitting that happens between coming home and going inside. In fall that ten minutes is the best part of the day.
Indoors works too. A ski chair in a mountain house living room, a den, or a finished basement is a normal request, and exterior oil paint does not object to being kept warm and dry. The indoor decor and furniture section covers pieces built with that plan in mind.
One practical note about fall specifically. Put it where the leaves will not bury it, or accept that you will be brushing the seat off in October. That is a five second job and not a reason to reposition anything, but it is worth knowing before you park it under the biggest tree in the yard.
Making One Yours
Everything is made to order, so customization is the normal path rather than an upcharge menu bolted onto a stock item. Tell us the colors you want. Just as importantly, tell us the colors you do not want. A remarkable number of good outcomes start with somebody saying no red, and meaning it.
Murals are the biggest lever. Send a photo of the view off your own deck and that becomes the ridgeline on the seat back. People do this with a peak they climbed, the run where a kid finally linked turns, or a grove on their own property. Browse the custom designs gallery for a sense of how far this goes.
Team colors, alma maters and state flags are steady requests. So are dates, names and initials painted small and low where they read as a detail instead of a monogram.
Now the part that trips people up. A logo is never hand painted. Not because we cannot, but because a hand painted corporate mark lands at about 97 percent accurate and 97 percent is precisely what a brand manager spots from across a lobby. Logos go on as a logo decal, floated onto a hand painted background so the artwork and the mark stay as separate layers. Aluminum and plastic appliques are the alternatives when you want dimension or a metal finish. Branded pricing is quoted on a call, since placement, quantity and finish are all faster to sort out in five minutes of conversation.
While we are being straight about what things are: our ski lift benches and porch swings are handcrafted replicas, built to look and sit like the real article. When a piece is a genuine retired lift, the product name says so. We do not invent provenance, and you should be skeptical of anyone who does.
Care Through Fall, Winter and the Mud That Follows
The honest answer is that there is almost no maintenance, which makes for a short section and a good chair. High quality exterior oil paint over a Douglas Fir base is designed to sit outside through the entire year without help.
Fall is the gentlest season on it. Less UV, cooler air, and the only real intrusion is leaves on the seat. Brush them off when it bothers you. Some of us wait until spring.
Winter is where new owners get nervous without cause. Snow lands on it and melts off it. The mural does not peel, lift or crack the way a printed surface would, because oil paint is a cured film and not a sticker sitting on top of one. If a big storm buries it, knock the snow off so you can use the chair again sooner. That is for your comfort, not the chair’s health.
Spring is the only moment it asks for ten minutes. Warm water, mild soap, a soft brush, and the winter grit comes off. No sanding, no annual resealing, none of the yearly ceremony that teak owners have convinced themselves is enjoyable.
The 3 year hassle free warranty is there if something actually goes wrong, and after three years the chair simply carries on. Ours weather a little, which is the correct behavior for wood that lives outdoors. Outdoor furniture that looks brand new after five years is outdoor furniture that has not been sat in.
Fall Is When Smart Gift Buyers Start
Here is the practical reason to think about gifts in October rather than December. Pieces are made to order and run two to four weeks, plus transit and plus whatever the mural adds. Order in October and it is a finished chair under a tarp in the garage. Order on December 15th and it is a printout in an envelope, which is a fine backup plan and a worse gift.
Retirements are the strongest occasion we see. Somebody finishes 30 years and the office is deciding between a plaque and a gift card. A chair with the resort they skied every winter painted on the back does what the plaque is trying and failing to do. Groups split the cost and the per person number drops fast.
Sixtieth birthdays run a close second, particularly when the recipient is a lifelong skier. There is a specific pleasure in giving someone a chair built out of the same gear they spent 40 years on. Everything in the Colorado made gifts collection comes out of this shop and out of skis that were retired here, which matters to that buyer more than it matters to us.
Memorial pieces matter to us and we handle them carefully. A parent’s skis built into a chair ends up as the seat where the family tells stories about them, which is a considerably better outcome than a garage rack. If that is your situation, call rather than filling out a form. Those builds want a conversation first.
For smaller budgets, the gift items section covers the lower end of the catalog and the ski gifts for him and her collection sorts everything by price, which is how most people are shopping in October anyway. A single snowboard makes a coffee table or a bench for the person who has a living room but no deck.
How Ordering Works, Start to Finish
Pick the chair, tell us what to change, and we build it. Two to four weeks is the normal window because every piece is made to order and none of it is sitting flat packed in a warehouse waiting for you to find the right Allen key.
Most chairs ship free to the lower 48, which is unusual for something this size and something we would rather absorb than argue about. Local delivery covers Colorado, and we ship nationwide to the lower 48.
If you have a hard date, lead with it. It is the single most useful thing you can tell us on the first call. We will either point you at the ready to ship section, where pieces are already built and waiting, or tell you honestly that the date will not work. An optimistic promise about a calendar helps nobody.
Custom murals add roughly a week or two on top of the base build depending on how much painting is involved. Rocker conversion is $75 and does not meaningfully change the timeline. Branded work with logo decals or appliques is quoted on a call.
Not sure which chair is right? Call. Ten minutes with somebody who actually builds these is worth an hour of scrolling, and we would much rather talk you into the correct piece than sell you the wrong one and hear about it a month later.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many pairs of skis go into one chair?
A single Adirondack ski chair takes four to five pairs of skis, and a matching set of two takes eight to ten pairs. If you are supplying your own gear, call 303.775.7273 and we will confirm whether what you have in the garage is enough before you ship anything.
Can the chair stay outside through a Colorado winter?
Yes. It is built from retired skis on a Douglas Fir base and finished in high quality exterior oil paint, so it is weatherproof and meant to live outdoors year round. No cover and no winter storage needed, and it carries a 3 year hassle free warranty.
Is it comfortable without a cushion, and how big is it?
It is designed to be sat in bare, which is the point for wet fall weather. The chair measures 45 inches tall by 36 inches deep by 32 inches wide, some builds run 55 inches tall, and the geometry is comfortable for people from 3 feet to 6 feet 10 with a 400 lb capacity.
Can you put our company logo on a chair?
A logo is never hand painted, because a hand painted mark is never precise enough for anyone who cares about the brand. Logos are applied as a logo decal floated onto a hand painted background, with aluminum or plastic appliques available if you want a dimensional or metal finish. Branded pricing is quoted on a call.
How long will it take to get here, and can it rock?
Pieces are made to order and typically take two to four weeks to build plus transit, and most chairs ship free to the lower 48. The rocker conversion is $75 more and is built on repurposed oak wine barrel slats, so ask for it when you place the order.
If the aspens outside your window just made the argument, start with the Ski Chair Night Aspen Tree Mural and browse the rest of the Adirondack ski chairs while you are there. Call 303.775.7273 and tell us what the view off your deck looks like, what colors you want and what colors you do not, and when you need it standing on your boards. We build in Manitou Springs, Colorado, we answer our own phone, and fall is shorter than you think.
