The Ski Chairs for a Porch Built to Watch the Sunset Roll In
There is a stretch of about twenty minutes most Colorado evenings when the whole western sky lets go, red bleeding into gold into a thin ribbon of pink behind the peaks, and everybody on the street quietly stops what they are doing to watch it. If you want a good seat for that show, you need chairs that face west and stay put. These are the ski chairs for a porch that get built for exactly that, a matched pair of hand painted Adirondack ski chairs made in Colorado from retired skis, with the Front Range blacked out in silhouette along the bottom and a full sunset climbing the seat backs. They are the Set of 2 Colorado Sunset Mountain Mural Ski Chairs, and they were made to be sat in, not admired from a distance.
The Twenty Minutes These Chairs Were Built For
Everybody who has spent a summer in Colorado knows the drill. The heat backs off around seven, the light goes long and gold, and the mountains turn into a cutout against a sky that keeps changing color faster than you can describe it. You mean to sit down and take it in. You usually end up standing in the driveway with a hose in one hand, or leaning on the railing because you never got around to putting a decent chair out there.
This set fixes that. Two chairs, side by side, angled at the horizon, ready before the good part starts. The mural on the backs is that sunset held still, warm end of the spectrum top to bottom, red into orange into gold with the peaks in black along the base. When the real sky lights up behind them, the painted one plays along. It is a little on the nose, sure. It also works, which is the part that matters.
The point of a pair instead of a single is not symmetry for its own sake. It is that watching a sunset alone is fine, and watching it next to somebody with a cold drink is better. One chair for you, one for whoever wanders out to join you. That is how most people use them, and it is why the set outsells the solo version most months.
What You Are Actually Looking At
Let us be plain about the piece, because plain facts are the whole point. This is a matched set of two Adirondack style ski chairs, hand painted with a Colorado sunset mountain mural and built in Colorado from real retired skis on a solid Douglas Fir base. Each chair stands 55 inches tall, 36 inches deep, and 32 inches wide, which is a genuinely comfortable seat for anyone from about three feet to six foot ten. The seat backs carry the mural. The frames do the work.
The Adirondack shape is the classic one for a reason. The tall fanned back, the wide flat arms, the seat that leans you back just enough to make getting up a small decision. On these, the fanned back is made of retired skis standing up in a row, so what looks like a painted panel from the yard is actually a lineup of old skis catching the light a little differently across their surfaces. Up close you can read the topography of it. From the porch you read the sunset.
These are chairs, not a chairlift replica and not a repurposed lift pulled off a mountain. Nobody is going to tell you they once hauled skiers up a peak, because they did not. What they are is honest handmade furniture built from gear that already earned its keep, and that story is better than a made up one anyway.
It is worth saying what the set is not, too, because it saves confusion. It is not flat pack, it does not arrive in a box of numbered parts and an Allen key, and it is not a print of a mountain glued to a board. Every chair is assembled and painted before it leaves Manitou Springs, so what shows up on your porch is the finished thing. Heavy, solid, and ready to sit in the day it lands.
How a Colorado Sunset Ends Up on a Pair of Ski Chairs
Start with the skis. One of these chairs takes four to five pairs of retired skis, which means the set of two runs eight to ten pairs of gear. That surprises people. They picture a single pair of skis magically becoming a chair, and it is a nice picture, but it is not how the math works. The fanned Adirondack back, the seat slats, the visible structure all want more ski than one pair can give. So the shop builds from its own deep stock of vintage and retro skis, cut and fitted so the surfaces line up into a back you can actually paint a mountain range across.
Then the base. The frame is Douglas Fir, chosen because it is strong, it takes a stain evenly, and it holds up outside for years. It is joined to carry a 400 pound capacity per chair, so nobody has to do the polite hover before sitting. On the arm of each chair sits a cup holder made from a repurposed ski binding, sized for a stein, which is the kind of detail you do not notice until the first time you set a drink down and think oh, that is clever.
The mural goes on last, hand painted in high quality exterior oil paint. Not a printed wrap, not a decal, not a sticker peeling at the corners by August. A person paints the sunset onto the skis, layer by layer, and seals it to live outdoors through Colorado weather. That is why the color stays saturated instead of fading to a sad pastel after one season. It is possibly visible from the neighbor’s kitchen window, which they will either love or quietly resent.
Set of 2 Colorado Sunset Mountain Mural Ski Chairs
Where These Ski Chairs for a Porch Actually Belong
The obvious spot is the front porch, facing the street or the range, where they double as furniture and as the thing people comment on when they walk up. But these ski chairs for a porch do not only work on a porch. A back deck that catches the evening light is arguably the better home for them, since that is where the sunset actually lands. A flagstone patio, the edge of a fire pit, the strip of gravel out back that you keep meaning to turn into a sitting area, all fair game.
They earn their place at a mountain cabin without trying. A pair flanking the door of a place in Breckenridge or up near Vail reads as local and lived in rather than catalog ordered. Down in the Springs, with Pikes Peak doing its thing on the horizon, the painted ridge and the real one have a nice conversation. People put them on lake docks, on covered porches at lodges, on the deck of a rental where guests will absolutely take a photo in them and tag the place.
Because the oil paint and the Douglas Fir are built for outdoor life, you do not have to baby them. They can live outside through the seasons, take a little snow, dry off, and keep going. Bring them under a covered porch or into a garage for the worst of winter if you want them to look showroom fresh for a decade, but they are not fragile. They are ski gear. Ski gear is used to weather.
Made From Skis That Already Had a Good Life
There is a reason the shop builds from retired skis instead of milling new lumber for the backs. Skis are gorgeous, overbuilt, and everywhere. Garages across the mountain west are full of pairs nobody skis anymore but nobody can bring themselves to throw out. Fiberglass, wood cores, old top sheet graphics, race stock from a season that mattered to somebody. Turning that into a chair keeps it out of the landfill and puts it somewhere you see it every day.
That opens a door a lot of buyers do not know is there. If you have your own retired skis, the pairs from the trip where everything clicked, or a parent’s old boards, or the skis a kid learned on before they left for college, those can go into a sentimental build. Here is the honest version of how that works, because the math matters. One chair needs four to five pairs, and almost nobody has that much retired gear sitting around. So the standard arrangement is that you send the one or two pairs that actually mean something, and the shop matches the rest from its own stock of vintage and retro skis. Your gear goes into the visible parts of the chair, where you will know it and see it. The rest is a careful match. Nobody claims a single pair became a whole chair, because it did not, and the shop will tell you that straight.
If the skis are already long gone, that is fine too. The shop can source a close match by brand and era so the piece has the right feeling, and it will never pretend the match is the original pair. The whole point is to be honest about it. A memorial or milestone chair built on a fib is not much of a tribute.
That honesty is also what makes the set work as a gift. A retirement, a big anniversary, a house finally finished after two years of contractors, those are the occasions people reach for a pair of these. It lands better than a gift card because somebody clearly thought about it, and it lands better than most furniture because it carries a story. When the recipient’s own old skis are in the build, it stops being a gift and becomes a keepsake, the kind of thing that gets pointed out to visitors for years. Not bad for something you were about to leave in the garage.
The Details That Matter Once You Sit Down
Specs are boring until you are the one using the thing, so here are the ones that come up. Each chair is 55 inches tall, 36 deep, 32 wide. Weight capacity is 400 pounds per chair. Yes. That is not a marketing number rounded up, it is what the Douglas Fir frame is built to hold. The seat sits at a true Adirondack recline, which means it is a chair you settle into for a while rather than perch on for a minute.
The cup holder on each arm is a repurposed ski binding, sized to take a full stein, so your beer is not balanced on the arm waiting for gravity to make its point. The warranty is three years, hassle free. Not three years of fine print and a claim form the size of a mortgage. Three years, hassle free. Yup. And shipping is free to most of the lower 48, so the price you see is close to the price you pay.
One more choice worth knowing about. Either chair can be built as a rocker for 75 dollars more, using slats made from repurposed oak wine barrels. So you could do one fixed and one rocker, or a matched pair of rockers, or leave both standard. On a porch where somebody likes to rock and somebody likes to plant their feet, the split works out nicely and settles an old argument.
Care is close to nothing, which is the way it should be. The exterior oil finish and the sealed mural mean a garden hose and a rag handle most of what a Colorado summer throws at them, dust, pollen, the odd margarita. Come fall, when the aspens turn and the evenings get sharp, the chairs are still exactly where you left them, and that is the season a lot of owners say they like them best. Wrap up in a blanket, ignore the thermostat, watch the light drop behind the peaks a little earlier every night. When the snow finally comes, the chairs can wear it or wait it out under cover, your call. There is no fussy off season routine, no cushions to drag inside every time a cloud shows up. They are ski gear that grew up into furniture, and they behave like it.
Make Them Yours
The pictured version is the Colorado sunset over the Front Range, and it is a best seller for good reason, but the mural is not fixed. If red and gold is too warm for your taste, the palette can cool down to blues and purples for an alpenglow feel. If the Front Range is not your skyline, the shop can paint a different one along the bottom, or paint the exact ridge you see from your own back door, which is the version that tends to make people a little emotional when it shows up.
Stain color on the base is yours to pick, from a light Blue Grey through Gray, Redwood, Walnut, and a near black Ebony, so the frame can match a deck or contrast it. You choose whether the fanned back is all skis, all snowboard, or a hybrid of both. And if you are ordering these for a business, a lodge, a brewery, a resort, there is a right way and a wrong way to put a brand on them. The hand painted sunset is a painting. A company logo is not painted, because a painted logo never holds its exact shape and color. A logo goes on as a clean logo decal floated onto the painted background, with aluminum or plastic appliques as alternatives, and branded pricing is quoted on a call. Ask about it when you call and they will walk you through the options.
Why People Buy From Colorado Ski Chairs
Every one of these is made to order in Manitou Springs, Colorado, by people who ski, by hand, from real reclaimed gear. That is not a tagline, it is just the operation. There is no warehouse of identical chairs in shrink wrap. When you order, somebody pulls the skis, builds the frame, and paints the mountain, and then it ships to you. That is why there is a short build queue and why no two sets come out exactly alike.
It also means you are talking to the shop, not a call center. If you want to see the mural mocked up before anybody cuts a ski, ask. If you want to know whether your particular skis will work in a sentimental build, send photos and they will tell you honestly. The pieces ship nationwide, so you do not have to live in Colorado to put a piece of it on your porch, though plenty of buyers do live right down the road. If you want to see the rest of the lineup, the full run of Adirondack ski chairs is worth a browse, and the ski and snowboard benches pair well with a chair set if you are furnishing a whole porch.
How Ordering Works
Ordering is not complicated. You can buy the set as pictured right off the product page, choosing your stain color, your back style, and whether you want either chair built as a rocker. If you want anything customized beyond that, a different palette, your own skyline, a sentimental build using your gear, or branding for a business, the fastest path is to call 303.775.7273 and talk it through. The shop will quote the custom work, confirm the details, and give you a realistic build and ship timeline before anybody starts cutting.
The set runs 1,491 dollars, marked down from 1,991, with free shipping to most of the lower 48. For a matched pair of hand painted, hand built chairs that are meant to outlast a couple of patio furniture cycles, that is a fair number, and the three year hassle free warranty is there in case it is not.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many skis does it take to make these ski chairs?
One chair uses four to five pairs of retired skis, so a matched set of two runs eight to ten pairs. A single pair does not make a chair. Because almost nobody owns that much retired gear, a sentimental build uses the one or two pairs that mean something to you and matches the rest from the shop’s own stock of vintage skis.
Are these real ski lift chairs?
No. These are Adirondack style ski chairs handcrafted from retired skis on a Douglas Fir base. They are not a chairlift, not a replica lift, and were never pulled off a mountain. Colorado Ski Chairs does sell genuine retired lifts separately, and those are always labeled as the real thing.
Can these ski chairs for a porch stay outside all year?
Yes. They are hand painted in high quality exterior oil paint and built on a Douglas Fir frame made for outdoor use, so they handle Colorado weather across the seasons. If you want them to stay showroom fresh for a decade, keep them under a covered porch or bring them in for the harshest part of winter, but they are built to live outdoors.
Can I get the sunset changed to my own mountains?
Yes. The Front Range sunset is the pictured version, but the palette, the skyline, and the exact ridge can all be customized. The shop can paint the mountains you see from your own back door. Call 303.775.7273 to design your version and get a quote.
Grab the Good Seats
The sunset shows up every night, ready for it or not. These are the ski chairs for a porch that make sure you have somewhere to sit when it does, two of them, so you are not watching alone. Take a look at the Set of 2 Colorado Sunset Mountain Mural Ski Chairs, or call 303.775.7273 and let’s paint your mountains instead of ours. The good seats tend to go to the people who set them out first.
