The Adirondack chair is a garden chair that was originally designed and manufactured by Thomas Lee. He was looking for a comfortable chair for the garden of his summer house, but he couldn’t seem to find anything that convinced him and decided to make a wooden chair himself. So he started nailing boards, making various designs and asking his family to try and see which one they were most comfortable with. Until they decided on the one they felt most comfortable with.
The Adirondack chair was redesigned over the years, but basically it is a garden chair made of wooden planks, with a slightly backward-slanting seat, a vertical slatted back, and large, wide armrests perfect for setting out snacks and drinks while sitting comfortably and relaxing.
Although making an Adirondack chair can be easy if we decide on a simple model and a rustic finish, making an Adirondack chair like the one in the photo is going to take many hours of work. But once we finish it, I can assure you that we will be totally proud of it and enjoy it for years to come. Just try to make more than one so that there are no fights when it’s time to sit 🙂
Here are the links to the articles in which I made this beautiful garden chair. All of them with their corresponding video. Here you will see from how to make some plywood woodworking templates from the full-scale paper plans (with link to the plans), through how to use the templates to make all the pieces, to how to assemble the chair.
If you prefer something simpler, here’s how to make a more rustic Adirondack chair using pallet wood. In this case I made the plans myself and they are free.
And if you want to skip straight to the videos, here’s the playlist from my YouTube channel: