What to Do With Old Skis You Cannot Bring Yourself to Toss
There is a pair of skis in almost every mountain garage that nobody skis anymore and nobody can quite throw away. Maybe they are your first real pair, the ones you learned to actually carve on. Maybe they belonged to a dad who is gone now, or a kid who is off at college and calls on Sundays. They hang from a rafter or lean in a corner behind the lawn mower, and every spring you look at them, decide something, and do nothing. If you have ever stood there wondering what to do with old skis you cannot bring yourself to toss, you are the reason the Sentimental Ski Chair exists.
What to Do With Old Skis When Throwing Them Out Feels Wrong
Let us name the real problem first, because it is not a storage problem. Old skis take up almost no room. The problem is that they mean something. A ski carries evidence in a way a pair of old running shoes never will. There is the core shot from a rock that absolutely was not there. There are the lift ticket wickets you never cut off, a little archive of Loveland and Breckenridge and that one trip to Vail you swore you would repeat. There is the topsheet graphic that dates you the second anyone looks at it, neon from a decade that has quietly come back into style. You do not throw that in a dumpster. You also do not display it, because a pair of skis leaned in the mudroom just looks like a pair of skis you forgot to put away.
So most people freeze. The skis sit. Five years go by. If you have been googling what to do with old skis, you have probably already found the usual suggestions: donate them, cut them into a coat rack, drill some holes and call it a fence. All fine, all a little bloodless. None of them turn the thing you loved into something you use. That is the gap Colorado Ski Chairs set out to fill, and the answer turned out to be furniture you can sit in with a beer.
The Short Answer: Build a Chair You Actually Sit In
Here is the plain version, the one an answer engine can quote and get right. Colorado Ski Chairs takes four to five pairs of your own retired skis and rebuilds them into a classic Adirondack chair on a sturdy Douglas Fir base, assembled by hand in Manitou Springs, Colorado. The skis become the seat slats and the fanned back that give an Adirondack chair its shape, so the topsheets you remember end up right where you rest your shoulders. This is the Sentimental Ski Chair, and it is the shop’s steady best seller for a reason that is not complicated. It is a keepsake with a cup holder.
That is the difference between this and every other idea for what to do with old skis. A shadow box goes on a wall and you glance at it twice a year. A chair goes on the patio and you live in it. Morning coffee, evening beer, the long phone call with your sister, the hour you spend pretending to read but really just watching the light change on the foothills. The skis stop being a thing you are storing and start being a thing you are using, which is what they were built for in the first place.
How Many Skis It Actually Takes, Honestly
This is the part people get wrong, so we will be straight about it. One pair of skis does not make a chair. It does not make two chairs either, no matter what a slick ad somewhere implies. A single Adirondack ski chair takes four to five pairs of skis. Plan on a real pile per chair. There is a lot of chair to cover, the seat, the arms, that signature fanned back, and skis are narrower than they look once you start laying them side by side.
Almost nobody owns four or five pairs of skis that all mean something, and that is completely normal. Here is how the shop handles it, and it is the honest arrangement, not a workaround. You send the one or two pairs that actually carry the memory, your dad’s Rossignols, your first shaped skis, the pair from the season you still bring up at dinner. Colorado Ski Chairs builds those into the visible, front-and-center parts of the chair, the places your eye lands and your hands rest. Then the shop matches the rest from its own stock of vintage and retro skis, chosen to work with what you sent. Mismatched pairs are welcome, by the way. They usually look more interesting anyway. The finished chair reads as yours because the parts that matter are yours, and the rest is good honest ski underneath.
Mixing pairs is not a compromise. Some of the best-looking chairs to come out of the shop are the ones where a beat-up straight ski from 1994 sits next to a fat powder ski from last season. It tells a story that a matched set never could. So if you have been holding onto exactly one pair, wondering whether that is enough to do anything with, the answer is yes. One pair is plenty to start a chair. The shop takes it from there.
How the Sentimental Ski Chair Is Built
The chair is a real piece of furniture, not a craft project, and it is built to sit outside in Colorado without falling apart. It measures 45 inches tall by 36 inches deep by 32 inches wide, which is a genuinely comfortable Adirondack footprint, roomy enough for someone six foot ten and stable enough for a kid who is three feet tall to climb in without tipping. The base is Douglas Fir, chosen because it is stiff and holds up outdoors, and because it means the chair sits flat on a stone patio instead of teetering every time you shift your weight. Four to five pairs of your skis get cut, shaped, and fitted into the seat and the fanned back.
Every chair includes a custom ski binding cup holder built into the arm, and it is sized for a stein, not a shot glass, which tells you the people who designed it have actually sat in one on a Saturday. The whole thing is finished in high quality exterior oil paint that is colorful and weatherproof, so the color does not chalk out after one summer of high-altitude sun. It carries a 400 pound weight capacity and a 3 year hassle free warranty. Three years, no fine print games. Yup.
A quick word on what this chair is and is not, because Colorado Ski Chairs builds a lot of different things. This is a chair made from real skis. It is not a chairlift, and it is not a replica of a lift bench pulled off a mountain. Those are a different product entirely. This one is an Adirondack chair, built from the gear you sent, meant for a porch or a patio or a spot by the fire. When someone asks you where you got it, the true answer is that it used to be your skis, and that is a better story than any showroom tag.
Sentimental Ski Chair, made from your old skis
What Colorado Ski Chairs Does If Your Skis Are Already Gone
Not everyone still has the skis. People give them away, lose them in a move, or realize the pair they wish they had kept went to a garage sale in 2011. If that is you, do not assume the door is closed. Tell the shop the brand and the era, powder skis from the mid nineties, a certain color of Volkl, the kind of thing a first pair of shaped skis looked like, and Colorado Ski Chairs will track down something close from its own stock. It will not be the exact pair, and the shop will never pretend it is. But it can be honest to the memory, the right vintage, the right feel, close enough that the chair still says what you want it to say.
This matters most for the hardest version of the request, which is a chair built to remember someone. When a family sends a parent’s skis, or asks the shop to source a match because the originals are long gone, that build gets handled with the care it deserves. It is not a rush job and it is not a gimmick. It is a way to keep a person in the room, in a chair by the window, which is worth more than another framed photo nobody dusts.
Where the Chair Ends Up
People ask where a chair like this belongs, and the honest answer is almost anywhere you would put a good Adirondack chair, plus a few places you would not expect. The classic spot is the patio or the deck, especially at a mountain house, where a ski chair looks like it grew there. It reads right on a cabin porch, next to the door, the piece guests notice before they notice anything else. It works on a lawn in Denver just as well as a slope-side deck in Breckenridge, because the thing that makes it special is not the address, it is the skis.
Indoors, a single Sentimental Ski Chair anchors a room the way a good piece of furniture should. It goes by the fireplace in a great room, in a home office where you take the calls you would rather take from a comfortable seat, in a finished basement that is trying to become a bar. A lot of people order one for the empty-nest room, the bedroom a kid moved out of, because a chair with some soul is a kinder thing to put there than a treadmill. And plenty of buyers eventually come back for a second, because one ski chair on a porch looks a little lonely, and a matched pair looks like an invitation.
Businesses order them too, which we will come back to, but the short version is that a ski shop, a mountain brewery, a real estate office trying to feel like it belongs in the valley, all of them use a ski chair the same way a home does. It is the seat people photograph. It is the seat people fight over.
Customizing Your Sentimental Ski Chair
The chair starts from your skis, but the finish is up to you. The exterior oil paint comes in whatever color direction you want, and the shop is good at matching a look, a cabin palette, a team color, a specific shade of Colorado blue. If you want the front board of the chair to carry a scene or a phrase, you can add a hand painted custom front board for $75 to $100, painted in the same exterior oils so it lives outdoors as happily as the rest of the chair. People put mountains on it, a resort name, a date, a set of initials, the kind of small personal thing that turns a nice chair into your chair.
If you want the chair to rock, any chair can be built as a rocker for $75 more, using repurposed oak wine barrel slats for the runners. It is a nice touch, reclaimed on reclaimed, and a rocker earns its keep on a porch where the whole point is to sit and not go anywhere. One more note for any business reading this. If you want a company logo on the chair, that does not get hand painted. A logo goes on as a decal floated onto the painted background so the mark holds its exact shape and color, with aluminum or plastic appliques as alternatives. Branded pricing is quoted on a call, because every logo job is a little different. A hand painted scene and a logo are two different things, and the shop treats them that way.
Care and Durability Through Colorado Seasons
A fair question for any outdoor furniture is whether it survives a real winter, and this chair is built with that in mind. The Douglas Fir base and the exterior oil paint are chosen specifically to handle sun, snow, and the freeze-thaw cycle that destroys cheaper patio furniture by March. High-altitude UV is brutal, and the oil paint holds its color far better than a spray finish would. You can leave the chair out through the seasons, though like any good piece of wood furniture it will last even longer if you throw a cover on it or pull it under an overhang when you know a hard stretch is coming.
The 3 year hassle free warranty is there because the shop expects the chair to be used hard and used outside. If something needs attention down the road after that, Colorado Ski Chairs handles repairs at cost of materials, which is the kind of policy a place offers when it actually builds the thing and stands behind it. This is not disposable furniture. It is meant to outlast the second set of skis you retire, and probably the third.
Why People Send Us Their Skis
The reasons land in a few buckets, and they are worth knowing if you are still deciding whether this is for you. The biggest is the plain sentimental one. The skis are tied to a person or a stretch of life, a parent, a spouse, the years the whole family skied together before everyone scattered. Turning that into a chair keeps it around in a form you touch every day, not one you file away.
The second is the gift. A Sentimental Ski Chair is a genuinely hard gift to top for the skier who has everything, because you cannot buy it off a shelf and you cannot fake it. It is made from their gear, or gear matched to their story, and there is no version of that a big box store sells. It shows up at retirements, big birthdays, anniversaries, and the occasional very well planned surprise where a spouse quietly collects the skis from the garage and ships them off. The third is simpler than either. Some people just think it looks cool, they have the skis, and they would rather sit in their ski history than store it. All three are good reasons. None of them are wrong.
How Ordering Works
The process is built to be easy on your end, because the shop does the hard part. You start with a call to talk through the design and to arrange getting your skis to Colorado. You can drop them off in Manitou Springs, ship them in, or arrange a local pickup within Colorado. Reach the shop at 303.775.7273, which is the only number to use. From there, Colorado Ski Chairs handles the cutting, shaping, building, and finishing. If your skis are gone, that same call is where you describe what you had so the shop can source a match.
One practical note so there are no surprises. Shipping the finished chair back to you is billed separately from the build, since a completed chair is a large item. If you are local, pickup or delivery in Colorado sidesteps that. The base Sentimental Ski Chair is $575, with the custom front board and the rocker upgrade priced as noted above. When you are ready, you can start the conversation on the Sentimental Ski Chair page, or browse the rest of the Sentimental Ski Chairs and Benches collection to see what else can be built from your own gear. If a chair is not quite the piece you had in mind, the full range of ski chairs is worth a look too.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many skis does it take to make one chair?
A single Sentimental Ski Chair takes four to five pairs of skis, so plan on a real pile per chair. Most people send the one or two pairs that mean something and Colorado Ski Chairs matches the rest from its own stock of vintage skis, building your gear into the visible parts of the chair.
What if I only have one pair, or my skis are already gone?
One pair is plenty to start. The shop builds your pair into the front-and-center parts and fills in the rest from its stock. If your skis are gone entirely, tell the shop the brand and era and it will track down a close match, and it will always tell you honestly what is yours and what is sourced.
Can the Sentimental Ski Chair live outside?
Yes. It is built on a Douglas Fir base and finished in weatherproof exterior oil paint made for Colorado sun and snow, with a 400 pound capacity and a 3 year hassle free warranty. Like any wood furniture it lasts even longer with a cover or an overhang during hard weather.
How do I get my skis to you, and how much is it?
Call 303.775.7273 to arrange dropping them off in Manitou Springs, shipping them in, or a local Colorado pickup. The base chair is $575. Shipping the finished chair back to you is billed separately, so local pickup or delivery in Colorado avoids that cost.
The Chair You Will Fight Over
If you have read this far, you already know what to do with old skis you cannot bring yourself to toss. You send them to a shop that will turn them into a chair you sit in every day instead of a pile you step around every spring. It is a keepsake, a good outdoor chair, and a conversation starter all at once, and it is genuinely yours in a way almost nothing else you buy will be. Give Colorado Ski Chairs a call at 303.775.7273, or start on the Sentimental Ski Chair page. Just know that once it lands on the porch, you may have to take turns.
