The Ski Bench for Labor Day Weekend You Keep Year Round
It is the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, the grill has been going since two, and somebody’s kid has claimed the only good chair. Three adults are standing up holding plates. The folding chair from the garage just did the thing where one leg sinks into the lawn and everyone politely pretends not to see it. You notice this every single year, and every single year you have forgotten about it by Tuesday.
Why the Long Weekend Always Finds the Weak Spot in Your Yard
Labor Day is the last honest test your backyard gets before the weather turns. You have more people than usual, they stay outside longer than usual, and every one of them wants to sit somewhere that is not a cooler lid. Whatever seating you have been getting away with since May finally runs out of road.
The pattern repeats at most houses. Two decent chairs, one that wobbles, and a folding chair that lives in the garage for exactly this occasion. Somebody ends up on the step. Somebody else stands the entire afternoon and claims they prefer it, which is a lie people tell at cookouts.
A bench solves a different problem than another chair does. Chairs carve a patio into assigned seats. A bench keeps things loose. Two people sit down, a third slides in when the conversation gets good, and nobody has to drag anything across the lawn. That is the real reason benches show up at every trailhead and every ballfield in the country.
Then there is the part nobody says out loud. Furniture bought in a panic on the Friday of a long weekend is furniture you will be hauling to the curb in three summers. Resin fades. Big box aluminum goes chalky. The cushions grow something you would rather not identify. Buying once and being finished with it is the less exciting option and also the cheaper one.
So this is about the boring, correct move. One bench that seats two adults, survives a Colorado winter with no supervision, and still looks like something you picked on purpose. It happens to be built out of old skis, which is either beside the point or the whole point, depending on who is asking.
Where a Ski Bench Comes From Before It Ever Reaches Your Deck
Every one of these begins as somebody’s retired gear. Skis get outgrown, outdated, delaminated, or simply replaced because a shop ran a good sale in April. They stack up in garages and in the back rooms of ski shops all over Colorado, and for a long time the only ending available to them was a dumpster.
We build in Manitou Springs, Colorado, close enough to the mountains that the supply never really dries up. Retired skis arrive from shops, from swap sales, from people cleaning out a garage after a move, and from customers who ship us their own pairs because they cannot stomach the idea of throwing them away.
The skis keep their graphics, and that is the part people underestimate until they stand in front of one. Ski top sheets are loud, strange and beautifully printed, and when you lay a run of them side by side across a seat back you get a stripe of color no furniture catalog will ever sell you. Some are recognizable. People spot the exact model they learned on and get unexpectedly emotional about it, which seems like a reasonable response to a bench.
If your own skis are hanging in the garage, using them is a genuine option and not a gimmick. Plenty of customers send in the pairs they learned on, or a parent’s pairs, or the skis from one season they want to keep hold of. We build those into the piece, and you end up sitting on your own history instead of storing it behind the snowblower. The sentimental builds are worth a look if that is where your head goes.
How One Gets Built, and Out of What
Underneath the skis is a Douglas Fir base. Fir is exactly what a frame should be: stiff, straight grained and willing to hold a fastener for years without arguing. The skis handle the visible work, the fir handles the structural work, and that is a fair division of labor for a piece named after a holiday about labor.
Paint is high quality exterior oil, brushed on. Not a spray can, not a stain that soaks in and gives up after two summers. Oil is slower to apply and slower to cure, and it is also the reason a piece sitting in Colorado sun for six seasons still has its color. Murals are hand painted in those same exterior oils, one at a time, by people who do nothing else all day.
The bench featured here, the Colorado Mountain Adirondack Ski Bench, measures 47 inches tall, 62 inches wide and 36 inches deep. That width matters more than it sounds like it should. A mountain range painted across a chair back gets you roughly 20 inches of ridgeline, which reads as a couple of triangles. Across 62 inches it reads as an actual range, with foreground and distance and somewhere for your eye to go. If you want more happening on that back, the Ski Bench with Aspen Sunset Mountain Mural and Falling Leaves is $1771 and puts a whole autumn on it.
It seats two adults easily, plus one dog who has concluded the middle spot belongs to him. It is weatherproof, it is meant to live outside, and it carries a 3 year hassle free warranty. Yup. Nothing to register, nothing to mail in, no card to keep in a drawer.
Pieces are made to order, so plan on two to four weeks. Some are already finished and waiting, which is what the ready to ship section exists for when you have a date you cannot move.
Who Actually Buys One of These
The largest group is people building out a backyard who want one piece that sets the tone for everything else. They have a fire pit, or they are about to have a fire pit, and they know that whatever goes in first decides what the rest of the yard has to live up to. A bench does that job better than four matching chairs, because it reads as a decision rather than a purchase.
Second group: cabin and mountain home owners who need seating that can be left alone from October to May. Nobody wants to spend the first two hours of a trip dragging cushions out of a closet and checking them for mice. A piece that sat through the winter and looks the same in June is worth real money to that person.
Third group, and this one surprises people, is couples who have been circling our chairs for a year and finally admitted they would rather sit next to each other. Two chairs put an arm rest and eight inches of air between two people. A bench does not. Small thing, until you notice you keep choosing the bench.
Then there are ski shops, lodges and restaurants that buy them for entry seating, boot changing, or the spot by the front door where people wait. Those buyers care about the 400 lb class of construction and the fact that a bench with no cushions cannot be ruined by a wet ski bib.
And finally the empty nesters, who have quietly become one of our steadiest groups. The kids moved out, the gear stayed, and turning four pairs of it into something the family sits on at Thanksgiving beats another decade of tripping over them in the garage.
Where the Bench Goes Once It Lands
The fire pit is the obvious answer and the most common one. A bench on one side and a pair of chairs on the other gives you a seating circle without the fussiness of a matched set, and you can find the whole arrangement over in patio sets if you would rather buy it in one shot.
The front porch is the second spot, and it is the one people underrate. A bench by the door is where you sit to pull your boots off, where the mail gets set down, and where two neighbors end up talking for 40 minutes because sitting made the conversation longer than standing would have. The ski bench collection has a range of widths and mural styles for exactly that placement. If the porch is tight, the 3-Ski Narrow Bench is $399 and slides in where a full width bench simply will not go.
Then the odd placements, which are often the best ones. At the end of a dock. Halfway up a long driveway where the view opens. Under the one tree in the yard that gives real shade. Facing away from the house, which sounds strange until you sit on a bench that faces a mountain and understand why nobody wants to sit facing the siding.
Indoors is a legitimate option too. A ski bench in a mudroom or at the foot of a bed in a mountain house works, and the paint is hard enough that it does not care about the change of address. Have a look at indoor decor and furniture if the piece you are picturing is staying inside.
One placement note. Give it a level footing. Flagstone, deck boards, gravel that has been tamped, anything that is not soft turf. A 62 inch bench on soggy lawn will find the low corner and let you know about it.
Making It Yours Without Making It Loud
The default assumption people bring in is that customization means adding more stuff. Usually it means the opposite. The best pieces we build are one good idea executed properly: your range, your colors, one date painted low where only you would find it.
Murals are hand painted in exterior oils, so almost anything you can photograph can be painted. Send us the view off your own deck and that becomes the ridgeline on the seat back. People do this with a range they can see from the kitchen window, a peak they climbed, or the run they skied with a parent who is gone now. Custom paint work carries additional fees depending on complexity, and we quote that honestly before anything gets started.
Color is the easy lever. Tell us what you want and, just as usefully, what you do not want. Half of a good custom job is somebody saying no orange, and meaning it. See the custom designs gallery for a sense of the range.
Now the thing people ask about most and get wrong most. A logo is never painted. Ever. Hand painting a corporate mark by eye produces a logo that is 97 percent right, and 97 percent right is exactly what a brand manager notices from across a room. Logos go on as a logo decal, floated onto a painted background so the color and the mark are separate layers. Aluminum and plastic appliques are the alternatives when you want dimension or a metal finish. Branded work is quoted on a call, because the questions about placement, quantity and finish are faster answered out loud than in an order form.
One more honest note on provenance. Most ski lift benches and porch swings out there, ours included, are handcrafted replicas built to look and feel like the real thing. If a piece is a genuine retired lift, the product name says so plainly. We are not going to sell you a story about a chair that came off a mountain when it did not.
What Happens to It in October, January and April
The short version is that nothing much happens to it, which is the entire pitch. High quality exterior oil paint over a Douglas Fir base is built to sit outside through the whole cycle. No covers required. No hauling it into the garage in November.
Fall is the easiest season on it. Cooler air, less UV, and the leaves that pile on the seat do no harm beyond looking like you have given up on yard work. Brush them off when it bothers you, which for some of us is March.
Winter is where people get nervous and do not need to be. Snow sits on it and melts off it. The paint does not lift and the mural does not fade in the way a printed or vinyl surface would, because oil paint is a cured film rather than a sticker. If you want a small favor, knock the heavy snow off after a big storm so the seat is usable again sooner, but that is comfort and not preservation.
Spring is the only time a bench asks for anything. Warm water, mild soap, a soft brush, and ten minutes on the grit that blew in over the winter. That is it. No sanding, no annual sealing, none of the yearly ritual that teak owners have talked themselves into enjoying.
Summer just runs. The 3 year hassle free warranty covers you if something genuinely goes wrong, and after that the piece keeps going anyway. We have benches from a decade ago still sitting where they were delivered, a little weathered, which is what you want from wood that lives outdoors. Furniture that never changes looks like furniture that never gets used.
The Gifting Angle, Which Is Bigger Than You Would Think
A surprising share of these leave here as gifts, and the reason is that a bench is one of the few gifts that is unmistakably about the recipient and not about the giver. It has their mountain on it. It goes in their yard. It is not a gadget they will be quietly rehoming in February.
Retirements are the strongest occasion. Somebody puts in 30 years, and the office wants to give them something better than a plaque. A bench with the range they are retiring to, or the resort they skied every winter, does what a plaque is pretending to do. Groups chip in and the per person number gets reasonable fast, which is most of the thinking behind the corporate ski gifts collection.
Anniversaries land well for the same reason a bench beats two chairs. It is seating for two, it goes where they will actually use it, and it stays. We have painted wedding dates onto the low corner of a seat back more than once, small enough that guests do not see it and the couple always does.
Memorial pieces are a real and careful part of what we do. A parent’s skis, built into a bench for the family cabin, ends up being where people sit and tell stories about them. It is a better outcome than a closet. If that is what you are here for, call and talk it through rather than filling out a form. Those builds deserve a conversation.
If you are shopping across a few people, the gift items section covers the smaller end of the catalog and the ski gifts for him and her collection sorts the same pieces by budget, which is how most people actually shop. The Customizable Single Snowboard Coffee Table at $397 is the common answer for somebody who has no yard but does have a living room.
How Ordering Actually Works
Straightforward. Pick a piece, tell us what you want changed, and we build it. Most orders run two to four weeks, because everything is made to order and nothing is sitting in a warehouse in a flat pack box waiting for an Allen key.
Most chairs ship free to the lower 48. Benches are heavier and larger, so shipping is quoted rather than assumed, and we will tell you the number before you commit rather than surprising you at checkout. Local delivery runs across Colorado, and we ship nationwide to the lower 48.
If your date is tight, say so on the first call. That is the single most useful piece of information you can give us. We will either point you at something already built in the ready to ship section or tell you plainly that the date does not work. Nobody benefits from us being optimistic about a calendar.
Custom murals add time on top of the base build, usually a week or two depending on how much painting is involved. Branded work with logo decals or appliques gets quoted on a call, since that conversation covers placement, quantities and finish all at once.
And if you are not sure which piece is right, call. Ten minutes on the phone with somebody who builds these saves you an hour of scrolling, and we would rather talk you into the correct piece than sell you the wrong one and hear about it in three weeks.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many skis go into a bench like this?
A bench uses considerably more material than a chair does, since the seat back spans 62 inches instead of a chair’s width. For reference, a single Adirondack ski chair takes four to five pairs of skis, and a set of two chairs takes eight to ten pairs. Call us at 303.775.7273 if you are supplying your own skis and want to know whether you have enough.
Can this bench really stay outside all winter?
Yes. It is built from repurposed 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 required, and it carries a 3 year hassle free warranty.
Can you paint our company logo on it?
A logo is never hand painted, because a hand painted mark is never exact enough to satisfy 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 when you want a dimensional or metal finish. Branded pricing is quoted on a call.
How long does a bench take to arrive, and what does shipping cost?
Pieces are made to order and typically take two to four weeks to build, plus transit. Most chairs ship free to the lower 48, while benches are quoted individually because of their size and weight. We deliver locally throughout Colorado and ship nationwide to the lower 48.
Can I use my own old skis in the build?
Yes, and it is one of the most popular things we do. Ship them to us, drop them off, or we can arrange pickup within Colorado, and we build them into the piece so the graphics you remember end up on the seat back. Start that conversation by phone so we can confirm the pairs you have will work.
If Labor Day just made the case for you, the Colorado Mountain Adirondack Ski Bench is the piece to start with, and the rest of the ski bench collection is a few clicks away. Call 303.775.7273 and tell us what your yard looks like, what range you want painted on it, and when you need it there. We build in Manitou Springs, Colorado, we answer our own phone, and we would rather get it right the first time than sell you something twice.
