Make an Adirondack Chair

An Adirondack chair waiting for a coat of paint.

I make a lot of Adirondack chairs because these chairs are comprised mostly of short lengths of wood and I can get rid of a lot of scrap material. The one pictured here is made out of an old hardwood floor, a door frame, and some discarded pine shelving. The woods included the pine, mahogany, oak, and a snip of walnut.

I also like making these chairs because they are useful and remind me of old time resorts, and backyards in New England populated by readers who wile away the hours doing nothing much at all. In many respects, these chairs are yard art and can be painted with darn near any color of paint you have laying about. We've got green, mauve, red, yellow, and two shades of blue chairs tucked around our fire pit and on our various porches.

They are easy to build if you have a sabre saw and the usual hand tools. As you become experienced making them you can fool around with the design and have high or low backs, make the front legs out of tree branches or fence posts, or even add rockers. Lately, I've avoided using nails or screws and pegged everything together with dowels.

Why bother making a chair when you can buy a plastic Adirondack chair at the Evil Retail Giant for about $30 bucks? Because you'll impress your kids and because it feels good to turn kindling into something useful.