Last Minute Christmas Gifts for Skiers That Actually Ship
It is the nineteenth of December and you are standing in the kitchen with coffee that went cold an hour ago, doing math on your brother in law. He learned on straight skis, he has bought every piece of gear he owns himself, and the sweater from last year is still in the gift bag it came in. Out in his garage there are eight or nine pairs of skis he cannot make himself throw away. That last detail is the whole answer.
Last Minute Does Not Have to Mean Bad
There is a difference between a panic gift and a gift you happened to decide on late. The panic gift is the one bought in an aisle under fluorescent light at 8:40 at night because it was the only thing left on the endcap. The late gift is the one you knew you wanted the whole time and just did not pull the trigger on. Same calendar, completely different object.
We build furniture out of retired skis and snowboards in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Most of what we make is built to order, which is a fine system in September and a less fine system on December 19th. So we keep a shelf of finished pieces that go out the door as soon as the order lands. That is really the whole trick to shopping late without buying junk. You stop browsing everything and you shop only the pile that is already built.
The other thing worth saying out loud is who these gifts are usually for. People in their fifties and sixties who have been handed a lot of ski themed merchandise over the years. Novelty socks. A mug with a gondola printed on it. Another fleece vest with somebody else’s logo on the chest. They are gracious about all of it. They are also not fooled for one second. What lands with that crowd is an object made out of the sport itself, built by people who actually ski, with no marketing language stuck to the side of it.
So here is the plan for the rest of this. What can ship right now and what cannot. What is worth buying at a hundred dollars, at four hundred, and at seven hundred. And how to hand somebody a chair on Christmas morning when the chair itself is still two weeks out.
What Can Actually Ship in December, and What Cannot
Custom work takes two to four weeks. That is not a hedge, that is how long it takes to strip bindings, lay out skis, build a Douglas Fir base, paint it in exterior oils, and let the paint cure properly. Rushing the cure is how you end up with a chair that looks great in the photo and tacky to the touch in April. We do not do that.
Which means if you are reading this in the third week of December, custom is a January project. Not a Christmas project. The honest move is to shop the ready to ship collection, where every piece listed is already finished and sitting in the shop. Those go out fast because there is no build queue in front of them.
Smaller items are the other safe bet. A set of two wall mounted ski tip bottle openers runs $99, mounts to a wall or the side of a bar, and has a magnetic catch so the cap does not end up in the driveway. It is a small thing. It is also the kind of small thing that gets used four hundred times a year, which is more than most gifts can claim. Hand painted pieces move fast too, and they weigh nothing next to a chair. The Colorado Mountain Mural Ski Wall Art at $299 is finished and on the shelf, and the rest of the wall art category is worth a scroll if the wall is the target instead of the porch.
What we will not do is promise you a delivery date we cannot hit. If something is going to arrive the week after Christmas, we would rather tell you that on the phone than let you find out from a tracking number on the 24th. Call the shop at 303.775.7273 and ask. Somebody who knows what is actually on the floor will answer.
One more scheduling note that saves people every single year. Freight for large furniture slows down badly between roughly December 18th and the new year, regardless of what anybody promises. That is not a Colorado Ski Chairs problem, that is a December problem. Plan around it rather than against it.
Under Three Hundred Dollars and Still Worth Opening
Price does not determine whether a gift lands. Specificity does. The best gift in this range is the one that could only have been chosen for that particular person, and ski gear gives you a lot of room to be specific.
The six pack of ski pole plungers is $299 and is exactly what it sounds like. Real ski pole handles, real grips, mounted on a working plunger. They are genuinely funny, they live in the bathroom of a mountain house forever, and every guest who visits picks one up and says something about it. That is a lot of mileage from a bathroom accessory.
If the recipient hosts more than they ski these days, look at the apres ski gift collection. Shot skis, party skis with removable boot glasses, drink bindings, the whole category of things that only make sense to a person who has stood in a lodge parking lot at four in the afternoon. Those are conversation objects. Nobody sets one down and forgets about it. The 2-Boot ShotzSki at $169 is the one that keeps getting invited back.
The bottle openers at $99 are the reliable floor of this range. Under a hundred, made from a real ski tip, wall mounted, and useful in a way that a novelty item is not. If you are buying for a group, a team, or a whole family and need six of something, this is usually where people land.
For gift shopping organized by what you actually want to spend rather than by product type, the ski gifts for him and her collection is sorted by budget. That is a faster way to shop on the 20th than scrolling a full catalog with a deadline breathing on you.
The Mystery Chair, and Why People Keep Buying It
The Mystery Ski Chair is $469, which is less than our signature customizable chair, and the reason is not quality. It is the same build. The difference is that you give up the right to choose the skis. We look at what came in that month, we pick a combination that works, and we build it. You find out what you got when the box opens.
Some people hate that idea. The people who love it tend to be the ones buying for someone who already has strong opinions about everything and would second guess a color choice anyway. Handing the decision to the shop takes the pressure off you and gives the recipient a story about how the chair showed up.
The specs do not change. Roughly 45 inches tall, 36 inches deep, 32 inches wide. Douglas Fir base under the skis, which is the part that carries the load. Ski binding cup holder built into the arm, because a beer needs somewhere to go and a binding was already the right shape. Exterior oil paint throughout, so it lives outside through actual weather without a cover. Rated to 400 pounds. Comfortable for anybody from about three feet tall to six feet ten.
Three year hassle free warranty. Yup.
Most chairs ship free to the lower 48, which matters more than people expect at the register. A large piece of furniture with $200 of freight bolted onto the checkout page is a different purchase than the one you thought you were making. We would rather build that into the price and let you see the real number up front.
If you want to choose the colors yourself and can live with a January delivery, the Colorado Flag chair with a customizable base at $697 is the one most people point at. It is our signature piece and it has been for years.
Gifts for the Person Who Hosts Every Single Holiday
Everybody has one. The house where Christmas happens by default, where the extra chairs come out of the basement, where somebody is always refilling something. That person is genuinely hard to shop for because they already own everything a house needs.
What they usually do not own is a piece of furniture that starts conversations. The customizable single snowboard coffee table at $397 does that job. One snowboard makes a coffee table or a bench, which is worth knowing if you have a board in the garage you have been sentimental about. Boards have a natural flex and a shape that reads as furniture the second you put legs under it.
It works indoors or out. Living room, covered porch, basement bar, mudroom bench where people sit to pull boots off. That flexibility is why it moves so well in December. The recipient will find a spot for it, and it probably will not be the spot you imagined. If your person rides instead of skis, the gifts for snowboarders collection cuts the catalog down to the board built pieces in one click.
If you would rather hand over something with less footprint, the gift items category covers the smaller end. Wall art, coat hooks, bottle openers, dog bowl stands, things that fit in a car and do not require a conversation about where they go. The Ski Dog Bowl Set at $149 is the sleeper in there, 24 by 12 by 9 inches, and it is the only gift on this page the dog also has an opinion about.
A word on the host who says they do not want anything. They mean it about objects, not about effort. A piece built from real retired gear by a small shop in Manitou Springs is not the same category as a thing bought off a shelf, and they will clock the difference immediately. That is the entire point of giving something handmade to a person who does not need anything.
When You Want the Gift to Be About Their Skis
This is the version of the gift that people remember for twenty years, and it is also the version that will not arrive by Christmas. Worth understanding both halves before you commit.
We build chairs out of skis that people send us. A pair from a first season. A pair somebody skied their last day on. A parent’s skis that have been in a garage since a funeral. The chair comes out of that specific gear and it goes on a porch and it means something every time somebody sits in it.
Here is the number you need. One Adirondack ski chair takes four to five pairs of skis. A matching set of two takes eight to ten pairs. That surprises people every time, because a chair does not look like it holds five pairs of skis, but the seat slats, the back slats, the arms, and the trim add up fast. If your person has three pairs in the garage, we can fill the gap from our own stock and still build the meaningful ones into the parts that show.
A snowboard chair needs at least three boards. A single board on its own makes a coffee table or a bench instead, which is the better call if you only have the one. Hockey stick chairs take twelve to fifteen sticks. A golf club chair takes one full set.
Since custom work runs two to four weeks, the December version of this gift is a card. Print a photo of a finished chair, write down what you are building and whose skis are going into it, wrap the card, and hand it over. Then build it in January when nobody is stressed. The chair shows up in February and the whole thing gets remembered twice. Start that conversation at 303.775.7273.
Shipping, Warranty, and the Parts Nobody Puts in a Gift Guide
Gift guides are usually written by people who have never had to answer a phone call in January about a wobbly leg. So here is the unglamorous section.
Most chairs ship free to the lower 48. Large sets and freight sized pieces are quoted individually, because a set of eight barrel chairs does not travel the same way a wall mounted bottle opener does. Nobody benefits from pretending otherwise.
Every chair carries a three year hassle free warranty. Hassle free means you call, you tell us what happened, and we sort it out. It does not mean a claim form and a photo requirement and a six week review process. We are a shop, not an insurance company.
The paint is exterior oil, applied to weather. These chairs sit outside in Colorado, which means UV at altitude, snow load, spring hail, and the freeze thaw cycle that destroys most patio furniture in three seasons. They hold up. You do not need a cover, though a cover never hurt anything.
If the recipient wants a rocker, that is a $75 upgrade and it rides on repurposed oak wine barrel slats. Real oak from real barrels, curved the way a rocker needs to be curved, which is a much better answer than a piece of bent plywood. It is one of the easiest upgrades to say yes to.
Assembly is minimal on most pieces and the chairs arrive built. Nobody wants a bag of hardware and an instruction sheet on Christmas morning. Made to order pieces run two to four weeks from the day the order goes into the queue, and the queue in November and December is longer than the queue in March. Plan accordingly, or shop the finished shelf.
How to Give a Chair When There Is Nothing Under the Tree
The logistics of gifting furniture are the part people get wrong, and it is fixable with about fifteen minutes of thought.
If the piece has already arrived, do not wrap it. Put it where it is going to live, throw a blanket over it, and walk the person outside after breakfast. A chair on a porch under a blanket with snow on the railing is a better reveal than anything you could do with paper. It also saves you from wrestling forty inches of Adirondack into wrapping paper at midnight.
If the piece is still in transit or still being built, wrap something small that belongs to it. A photo of the finished style. A printed note with the build details. The bottle openers, if you bought those too, since they arrive fast and give the person something to actually open. The physical object in their hands can be small as long as it clearly points at the larger thing coming.
For a chair built out of their own gear, wrap a single ski. Take one out of the garage pile, tie a ribbon around it, and lean it against the tree. They will figure it out in about four seconds and it is a genuinely great moment.
Do not print a shipping confirmation email and hand that over. It reads as an apology instead of a gift. Write the note yourself, on paper, and say what you are having built and why you picked their gear for it. That is the version people keep in a drawer.
Last thing. If the gift is going to a house you will not be at, call ahead and make sure somebody is there for a freight delivery. Large furniture does not fit in a mailbox and it does not enjoy sitting in a driveway in a snowstorm.
Where This Stuff Comes From
The shop is in Manitou Springs, at the base of Pikes Peak. The skis come from resorts, ski swaps, shops clearing out rental fleets, and from customers who mail us their own gear in a long cardboard box. Every pair has been skied. That is not a marketing angle, it is just where the material comes from.
Nothing is stamped out. Skis vary in width, in camber, in graphic, and in how badly they got beaten up, so every chair lands a little differently even inside the same design. If you want to shop specifically for provenance, the Colorado made gifts collection gathers the pieces where where it was built is part of why you are buying it.
The murals are hand painted in exterior oils by hand, mountain scenes and skylines and flags, brush on wood. Logos are a different process entirely. A logo is never painted. It goes on as a decal floated onto a painted background, with aluminum and plastic appliques available as alternatives when a decal is not the right answer. Anybody who tells you they hand paint a corporate logo at production speed is telling you a story. Branded work gets quoted on a call.
Ski lift benches and swings are handcrafted replicas unless the product name specifically says it is a genuine retired lift. We have sold real ones, including a museum piece single chair from Sun Valley, and when it is real we say so in the title. When it is a replica, that is in the title too. Provenance is either documented or it is not claimed.
That is the whole operating philosophy. Say what a thing is made of, say how long it takes, say what it costs, and let people decide. It works better than the alternative and it makes December a lot less stressful for everybody.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still get a ski chair delivered before Christmas?
Only from the ready to ship collection, and only if you order early enough in the month for freight to move before the holiday backup. Custom and made to order chairs run two to four weeks from the day they enter the build queue, so in late December those become January deliveries. Call 303.775.7273 to check what is finished and on the floor right now.
How many pairs of skis does it take to build one chair?
One Adirondack ski chair takes four to five pairs, and a matching set of two takes eight to ten pairs. A snowboard chair needs at least three boards, while a single snowboard makes a coffee table or a bench instead. If you do not have enough gear, we fill in from our own stock and put your skis where they show.
What is the cheapest gift you make that is still worth giving?
The set of two wall mounted ski tip bottle openers at $99 is the reliable answer. It is made from real ski tips, it has a magnetic cap catch, and it gets used constantly rather than sitting on a shelf. For a slightly bigger swing, the six pack of ski pole plungers at $299 is the item people quote back to us most often.
Do these chairs actually stay outside all winter?
Yes. They are finished in exterior oil paint and built on a Douglas Fir base, and they are designed to live outdoors through snow, hail, and high altitude sun. A cover extends the finish if you want to use one, but it is not required. The three year hassle free warranty covers you either way.
Can I send you my own skis to have a chair built?
Yes, and it is one of the most common requests we get. Box the skis, ship them to the shop, and we build the chair around the gear you sent. Call first at 303.775.7273 so we can talk through how many pairs you have and which parts of the chair your skis should end up in.
Ready to Sort Out Christmas
If you know what you want, the ready to ship page is the fastest path from here to a finished gift. If you are not sure, or you want to know exactly what is sitting on the shop floor today and how fast it can move, pick up the phone. Call 303.775.7273 and we will tell you the truth about the calendar, which is more than most places will do on December 20th.
