Continuing the tradition of weekend backyard improvement, we ordered a pair of Adirondack Chairs from, where else, adirondackchairs.com of course!
They arrived earlier in the week and we set out to put them together on Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend (hence the name of the event). To keep with the spirit of how we like to do things over here (Subway Wars anyone?), we opted to turn it into a little competition: who could assemble their chair the fastest (and the best). The second clause was added to avoid someone flying through the assembly process only to be left with a booby-trapped chair.
Naturally we documented the process with photos of each person’s progress (in 10 minute intervals). Enjoy…
The setup
Sasha, the referee for the day’s event, inspects the goods to make sure there’s no funny business going on. We initially interpreted her pointing at Karen’s chair as an indication of nefarious behavior but then we remembered she’s a pointer and she sometimes just points at things for no reason.
Let the building begin!
Alex 10 Minutes in…
Being the obsessive organizer that I am, I chose to try and lay out all the pieces as best I could to mimic the chair they’d ultimately come together to make. You can imagine this sort of approach to things never being difficult to live with, right?
Karen 10 Minutes in…
Karen chose to group by piece type instead and go for a leaner approach to adding the legs to the seat.
Alex 20 Minutes in…
With most of the bottom of my chair put together, I turned my attention to the back and then the arms.
Karen 20 Minutes in…
Do not let Karen’s spread out approach fool you, she was still hot on my heels at this point (hello, foreshadowing!).
Alex 30 Minutes in…
I just kept on rolling here. Screwing the back bar into place (the top bar of the piece laying on top of the chair back) took a lot of work (as there weren’t pre-made holes for that part) and I think this is where I was ultimately able to distance myself from the competition.
Karen 30 Minutes in…
Please take note of that same piece I just mentioned on Karen’s side (to the left) yet to have the bar screwed in. It is those 4 screws that would be her undoing and send me to the front of the pack like Big Brown.
Alex 40 Minutes in…
This is starting to look like a chair if I do say so myself!
Behind the scenes info: My biggest mistake was that I screwed the bolts in backwards on the left arm so I had to backtrack and remove them and re-screw them but lucky for me…
Karen 40 Minutes in…
Karen was busy playing air guitar with her chair’s arm instead.
Alex 50 Minutes in…
Who’s got two thumbs and really brings it when it comes to putting together an Adirondack Chair?
Karen 50 Minutes in…
Karen did all she could but was ultimately prohibited from finishing due to a missing bolt so we had to head off to the hardware store. Please note the awesome little foot rest that slides out so you can get your lounge on. Also, I know it looks like I’m laughing but I’m really not.
The poor guy had to sit, flipped over on his side like an abandoned car on the side of the road until we could return with the needed bolt.
The end!
After about an hour’s worth of work we now have our brand new (and totally DIY’ed) back patio up and running (and just in time for Memorial Day!).
Apart form the missing bolt, the chairs were a breeze to put together and they’re really comfortable. If you’re in the market for some, check out this package (comes with that neat little table, too).
Next up: give these guys an extra coat of weather proofing.
