Your Home & Color Coach

With renters arriving in a couple of weeks, I am on a hunt for Adirondack chairs that will replace the rickety old painted wooden ones we have currently at the cottage. There is such a difference in quality and price — I can’t seem to figure out what’s best.

The traditional wooden ones seem to last only a few years. Even reviewers at LLBean are sending theirs back for replacement chairs. After surveying the other offerings online, I went looking for Amish craftsmanship hoping to find something to last a decade or two. What did I find there? Plastic.

This white “poly” chair is made out of plastic bottles and it is guaranteed to last many years (the Amish guarantee is 50!), but I can’t seem to bond with a plastic facsimile of the hand-crafted old originals. Although the “poly” is not supposed to fade, I’ve heard that some colors do. White works for me so that’s not a big issue.

The price is extraordinary — twice or three times that of a wooden Adirondack chair. So that’s another sticking point. Is a plastic chair really worth almost (and in some cases over) $300?

If you have any experience with these Polywood chairs and would like to share that with me, feel free to comment. I’m kind of a purist when it comes to chairs, but they are comfortable. (My husband claims he can tell plastic from the road…). What to do…