What an Adirondack chair really costs over ten years
The cheap chair is the expensive one. Here is the sum.
The cedar chair
- Chair: $200–300
- Stain or oil: one can a year at $30–50, ten years: $400
- Sandpaper, brushes, a sander eventually: $100
- Your Saturday, once a year: priceless, or $0 if you enjoy it
- Replacement in year 6–8, because the joints have opened: another $250
- Ten years: roughly $950–1,050, and two chairs' worth of landfill.
The resin chair
- Chair: $60–150
- Replaced every 2–3 years when it cracks: four chairs in ten years
- Ten years: $240–600, and four chairs in landfill.
The recycled HDPE chair
- Chair: $229 USD, delivered
- Upkeep: soap and water
- Replacement: none; the warranty is twenty years
- Ten years: $229. Year twenty: still $229.
What the numbers leave out
The wooden chair looked better than ours for its first summer. The resin chair was in the car that afternoon. Those are real advantages and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But over the decade, the chair that costs the most to own is the one that cost the least to buy.