The Snowboard Bench for an Entryway That Doubles as a Table
Every house has that one spot by the front door where the boots pile up, the mail lands, and somebody always ends up hopping on one foot trying to yank off a wet lace. Most people solve it with a bench from a big box store that looks like every other bench from a big box store. A Light Blue Mystic Mountain Mural Snowboard Coffee Table/Bench solves the same problem while looking like nothing else on the block, which is the whole reason a snowboard bench for an entryway makes so much sense. It is hand painted by Colorado Ski Chairs on one real retired snowboard, it seats two adults, and when the boots finally go away for the season it slides in front of the couch and works just as well as a low table.
The Board That Refused to Retire
Snowboards do not die easy. A deck gets ridden hard for a decade, picks up a few core shots and a delam near the tail, and then it lives out its retirement leaning against a garage wall because nobody can quite bring themselves to throw it in the dumpster. You know the one. It has a sticker on it from a resort that changed its name two owners ago, and the topsheet graphic is faded in the exact shape of the bindings that used to sit there.
Colorado Ski Chairs started from that pile of boards that people could not part with. The shop is in Manitou Springs, right up against the Front Range, and the idea was simple. Take the gear that meant something, the gear too good to toss and too beat to ride, and turn it into furniture a person actually uses every day. The Light Blue Mystic Mountain bench is one of those pieces. It is built around a single retired snowboard, painted with a soft blue mountain range, and finished to live either inside your front hall or out on a covered porch. It is not a decoration that gets dusted twice a year. It is a seat, and it earns its keep.
There is something a little satisfying about a board that spent its life sliding downhill now holding still by your door so you can sit down and get your boots off. The snowboard finally gets to relax. So do you.
What It Actually Is, and Why One Snowboard Is Enough
Here is the honest part, because Colorado Ski Chairs is straight about how these things are made. This bench is built from one real retired snowboard. Not a print of a snowboard, not a plank shaped like one. An actual deck, with its own curve and its own history, mounted onto a solid wood frame and turned into a seat that runs about 60 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and 17 inches tall. That is bench height, the kind you can sit on comfortably and pull your shoes on without folding yourself in half.
Now, a fair question comes up a lot, because the shop also builds snowboard chairs, and those need at least three boards apiece. So does a bench need three boards too? No. A bench and a coffee table each use one snowboard, because the deck itself becomes the seat surface. A chair is a different animal. A chair has to wrap a board around your back and under your legs and hold you at an angle, and that takes at least three snowboards to do right. A bench lays the board flat and long, one deck across a wood base, and one is exactly enough. If a salesman ever tells you a single board becomes a full chair, walk away. For this snowboard bench for an entryway, though, one board is the correct answer and the accurate one.
The curve matters more than you would guess. A snowboard is not flat. It has camber and a little sidecut, and when it gets mounted as a seat that gentle bow reads as shape rather than a defect. A flat plank cannot do that. The mural painted across it follows the curve, so the light blue peaks up front and the softer ranges behind them bend a touch with the deck. It gives the whole thing depth that a straight board never would.
Why an Entryway Is the Spot It Was Built For
Think about what your front hall actually has to do. People come in cold and wet. Boots need to come off. Bags get set down. Somebody needs to sit for ten seconds to deal with a zipper that froze shut. A snowboard bench for an entryway handles all of that at a scale most furniture ignores, because it is 60 inches wide and rated to 300 pounds. Two adults can sit on it at once, which matters more than you think when the whole family piles in after a day on the hill and everyone wants to sit down at the same time.
The height is right for the job. At 17 inches it sits about where a dining chair sits, so getting up and down is easy on the knees, and that is not a small thing for anyone who learned to ski on straight skis and has the knees to prove it. It is low enough that a kid can climb on and tall enough that an adult is not folded into a squat. Boots line up underneath. A basket of gloves and hats can tuck beside it. And the top stays clear enough to drop keys and a phone while you deal with the rest.
There is also the plain matter of first impressions. The first thing a guest sees when they walk into your place is that front hall, and a hand painted mountain scene on a real snowboard says something a folded metal bench never will. It says a person lives here who has actually been up the mountain, and who kept a piece of it.
Light Blue Mystic Mountain Mural Snowboard Coffee Table/Bench
One retired snowboard, a hand painted blue mountain range, and a 300 pound capacity that shrugs off a full family piling in the door.
The Mystic Mountain Mural, and Why the Blues Matter
The mural on this one is built in layers. Light blue peaks stand up front, sharp and close. Behind them the blues go softer, and the back range is washed out just enough that it reads as distance instead of detail. That is a deliberate trick, and it is the difference between a painting that looks like real mountains and one that looks like a kid drew triangles. Your eye reads the pale far range as miles away, exactly the way an actual Front Range morning looks when the light is still coming up over the plains.
The cooler palette is the point for a lot of buyers. Not everybody wants the full rustic cabin treatment, all deep browns and antler everything. The light blue mystic mountain scene gives you the mountains without the lodge cliche. It fits a modern entryway, a coastal-ish blue and white room, a gray-toned living space, places where a heavy log bench would look out of place. It leans calm rather than loud.
And because the shop hand paints every one, the blues are not locked in. If your walls run warmer and you want the range to shift a shade greener or grayer, that is a phone call, not a special order form with an upcharge for breathing. The mountains can move to match your room. Try getting that from a catalog.
One Piece, Two Jobs: Bench Now, Table Later
This is where the coffee table part earns its slash in the name. The same piece that lives by your door in ski season can move to the middle of the room the rest of the year. At 60 by 18 inches it is a genuine coffee table footprint, long enough to sit in front of a couch and hold what a coffee table holds. Drinks, books, a couple of dinner plates on a night nobody feels like sitting at the table, a laptop, the remote that is always lost anyway.
The 300 pound rating is what makes the double life work. A coffee table that people also perch on when the room fills up needs to take weight, and this one does. So on game day when there are more people than seats, the table becomes overflow seating and nobody has to worry about it. It is a boot bench in December and a coffee table in July, and it does both without looking like it is pretending to be either.
People move it around more than they expect to. It starts in the entryway, migrates to the living room, ends up on the porch in summer. It is one of the few pieces of furniture that gets a promotion instead of getting shoved into a spare room.
Built to Take Weather, Wet Boots, and a Dog Who Insists
An entryway is a rough neighborhood for furniture. Snow melts off boots into puddles, bags get dropped, and the whole thing takes a beating from October to April. This bench is finished with a water and weather proof coating for exactly that reason. Wet boots do not hurt it. A dripping jacket tossed across it does not hurt it. You can wipe it down and move on.
That same finish means it does not have to stay inside. Put it on a covered porch or a screened deck and it holds up fine. Direct year round weather with no cover is asking a lot of any painted piece, but under a roof it is right at home outside just as it is inside. That flexibility is part of why it travels around the house so easily. It is not fragile, and it does not need babying.
The 300 pound capacity also quietly covers the reality of a house. Two adults sitting to trade boots. A kid standing on it to reach a hook. And yes, the dog who has decided the bench by the door is now the dog’s bench, thank you, and will be sitting on it whether invited or not. The build handles all of it. Solid wood frame, real board on top, nothing precious.
Making It Yours
The version pictured is the light blue mystic mountain scene, and it is a Best Seller for a reason, but it is a starting point, not a fixed menu. The blues can run cooler or warmer. The shape of the range can change. If you want a specific ridgeline, the kind you actually look at from your own back deck, that can be painted in. Colorado Ski Chairs does this by hand in Manitou Springs, so the piece bends to the room rather than the other way around.
One honest note for anyone thinking about branding it, because businesses ask. A hand painted mountain scene is one thing, and the shop paints those beautifully. A company logo is a different thing, and a logo never gets painted freehand. It goes on as a clean logo decal floated onto the finished piece so the mark keeps its exact shape and color, with aluminum or plastic appliques as alternatives. Branded and bulk pricing gets quoted on a call rather than listed, because it depends on the logo and the quantity. If a lodge or a rental company wants a matched run of these with their mark on them, that is a real conversation, and the number to start it is 303.775.7273.
For a home buyer, most of the customizing is simpler than that. Pick your blues, tell them the spot it is going, and let the mural get painted to suit. The piece is made to order one board at a time, so there is room to make it yours before it is ever built.
Where It Lands Beyond the Front Hall
The entryway is the headline use, but this bench shows up in a lot of rooms. In a mudroom it does the same boot duty with even less worry about the mess. At the foot of a bed it becomes the place you sit to put on socks and the place a folded blanket lives. On a covered porch it is the spot for morning coffee where the light blue mural lines up with the real range on the horizon, which is a small pleasure that does not get old.
It also earns its spot in places that are not houses. A short term rental or a mountain cabin that gets rented out wants pieces guests notice and remember, and a hand painted snowboard bench for an entryway does exactly that. Guests photograph it. It ends up in the listing photos. It is the kind of detail that makes a place feel like somebody cared, which is worth more than another gray sofa. A ski shop, a brewery with a mountain-town vibe, a lobby that wants character without a renovation, they all find a use for a piece like this.
And it makes a serious gift. For the skier or rider who has every piece of gear already, furniture built from the sport is one of the few things they do not have and cannot buy at a resort shop. A retirement, a big anniversary, a housewarming for the cabin somebody finally bought, this is a gift that lands.
Living With a Piece That Has a Past
There is a difference between furniture that is new and furniture that has been somewhere. A brand new bench is fine. It is also forgettable. A snowboard bench for an entryway carries a life before it got to your door, and that shows in small ways. The topsheet under the paint has grain and wear the shop leaves honest rather than sanding away. The deck has a shape it earned on real snow. You are not sitting on a factory imitation of the mountains. You are sitting on something that was actually up there.
That is the part people underestimate until the piece is in the house. Guests ask about it. Kids want to know if somebody really rode it. The answer is yes, somebody did, and now it holds still by your door and makes the whole entryway feel like it belongs to a person with a story rather than a showroom. A snowboard bench for an entryway is furniture, but it is also a small act of not throwing away something good, and there is a quiet satisfaction in that every single time you sit down to deal with your boots.
Why Buy From Colorado Ski Chairs
There are cheaper benches. There is no argument there. What there is not, anywhere else, is a bench made from a real retired snowboard, hand painted with a mountain scene that can be tuned to your room, built one at a time by a small shop in Manitou Springs that has been turning old gear into furniture for years. Every piece is made to order, which means it is made for your spot and not pulled off a pallet.
The shop ships nationwide, so the Front Range does not have to be your backyard for one of these to end up in your front hall. And the same crew that builds the benches builds the snowboard chairs, the ski chairs, the wall art, and the custom pieces, so if the bench is the start of an idea rather than the end of one, there is a whole catalog behind it. Similar pieces are grouped under benches, and more of the sit-down furniture lives under indoor decor and furniture.
How Ordering Works
Ordering is refreshingly low drama. The Light Blue Mystic Mountain bench runs $471, and it is made to order, so once you place it the shop builds it for you rather than shipping something off a shelf. If you want the standard light blue scene exactly as shown, you order it and it gets built. If you want the palette shifted, a different range painted in, or you have questions about the spot you are putting it, call 303.775.7273 and talk it through before the board gets painted.
Because each one is made one board at a time, there is a build window rather than same day shipping, and that is the honest trade for a hand painted piece made from a real snowboard. It is worth the wait. A bench like this is not a thing you replace in two years when it sags. It is a thing that outlives the entryway it started in and moves to the next house with you.
When you are ready, take a look at the Light Blue Mystic Mountain Mural Snowboard Coffee Table/Bench and picture it by your door.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many snowboards does it take to make this bench?
Just one. A snowboard bench and a snowboard coffee table each use a single real retired snowboard, because the deck itself becomes the seat surface. Snowboard chairs are the ones that need at least three boards apiece, since a chair has to wrap the board around your back and under your legs. For a bench, one board is both enough and accurate.
Can I really sit on it, or is it mostly for looks?
You can absolutely sit on it. It is rated to 300 pounds and runs about 60 inches wide, so two adults fit comfortably, plus a kid or a determined dog. It is built as a working bench first, which is exactly why it holds up as overflow seating when it is doing coffee table duty.
Can it go outside?
Yes, on a covered porch or a screened deck. It is finished with a water and weather proof coating, so wet boots and a dripping jacket are no problem, and it holds up outdoors as long as it is under a roof rather than taking direct year round weather with no cover.
Can the colors be changed to match my room?
They can. The light blue mystic mountain scene is the pictured version, but the blues can run cooler or warmer and the range shape can be adjusted. It is hand painted to order in Manitou Springs, so tell the shop what your room needs and the mural gets painted to suit. Call 303.775.7273 to work out the details.
The boots are going to come off by your door one way or another. Might as well sit on a piece of a mountain to do it. Take a look at the Light Blue Mystic Mountain snowboard bench and see if it belongs in your entryway.
