Patio Furniture

[Beachbummette]

Does anyone have any suggestions about patio furniture.
All that we have bought down there does not last very long. I have to replace some of our patio furniture in one of our rental units and it is on the gulf.
Anyone had good luck with a particular product? If so, where did you buy it?

 

[Beach Runner]

OMG, patio furniture is a nightmare at the beach! My husband decided that he wanted to build the pool furniture for our new beach house. He took classes at Highland Hardware in Virginia-Highlands (in Atlanta) where they built an Adirondack chair. He had all of the experts there advising him on how to build furniture that would withstand the elements - cypress, hundreds of dollars worth of stainless steel screws, marine varnish, etc. The eight chairs and four chaise longues he built were absolutely beautiful. It took him three months to build them. It took Mother Nature less than a year for them to need refinishing. He did that, and three months later they were already showing deterioration. They were true works of art. So I suggested that we bring the four best chairs back to Georgia so that all of his work would not be in vain. They've survived this climate.

We purchased wooden Adirondacks from a guy on Highway 98 in PCB. He guaranteed that they'd last ten years. After just a month the wood was cracking. We returned them, and he said that we didn't buy them from him. I almost punched him out. We drove back to our house, retrieved the check image online, printed it out, drove back to PCB, and showed him the check. He reluctantly gave us a refund.

As a substitute, we bought plastic Adirondacks from Home Depot for $12.88 each and aluminum chaise longues at Lowe's for $49.99. They're weather-proof and renter-proof. Not as classy, but, heck, we refuse to replace 14 chairs every year. I hear that the weatherproof wicker holds up, but I personally just don't like the wicker look. If I'm gonna go cheap, I'm gonna go Cheap with a capital "C."

 

[Beachbummette]

OMG! Your experiences sound as bad as ours! We have bought at our gulf front rental units the plastic that is supposed to look like wicker...it always starts coming unraveled after about a year.
Looks like I may just need to go and buy the white plastic stackable stuff! I want it to look nice but I am tired of replacing it! I will let you know if I find a good substitute.

 

[Curtis]

www.westminsterteak.com



Curtis

 

[Beachbummette]

Thanks Curtis!
Have you had any experience with this? Has it held up for you?
Thanks for any input.

 

[SGB]

After many tries at various patio furniture we're left with the following that work for us:

Rental house at beach: Cheap plastic adirondack chairs from Walmart/Home Depot. I recommend the tan over the green. The green kind of fades out. These lasted 3 years at our rental. When they break, just replace. The other great feature of these chairs is that they stack and are easy to carry into the garage when a storm comes.

House on bay: Teak Westminster furniture that has not been stained or treated. It weathers to a grey and stays that way. No maintenance. You can get cheaper teak, but the Westminster is very high quality. If you order from Westminster, call it in and try and get a discount. It worked for me.

 

[Beach Runner]

www.westminsterteak.com



Curtis

We bought an expensive teak dining set for a covered porch. The problem is that people with no manners lean back on the back legs of the chairs and break them. (People pay a lot to stay at our house. You think they'd know better. Another case of too much green, not enough blue.) Anyhow the wood itself does fine. The indoor dining chairs are a little more forgiving because they don't have the brutality of the weather on top of abuse. We've repaired the teak chairs several times. It's just a matter of time before their irreparable.

So I don't think teak is the answer.

 

[Mermaid]

Sad to say, but I think plastic is the way to go. It washes up easily and is cheap enough to replace every other year. The sun and mildew in SoWal are brutal on any outdoor items that are out in the air uncovered! May as well resign yourself to chairs and chaises not lasting very long.

Don't do what I did, though. I had four green plastic Adirondacks that were in fine shape, only faded. I bought that new spray paint that adheres to plastic, thinking that I'd save the landfills some space by not adding perfectly good stuff to them. I ought to have thrown my environmental scruples aside. I spent the exact same money in spray paint that I would have for new chairs! I learned the hard way that the paint doesn't go very far at all, and at $5 a pop, it's hardly economical either.

 

[Unplugged]

I can't believe what I'm reading here - cheap plastic furniture from Walmart and Home Depot???!

Hasn't anyone heard of all-weather 100% high-density polyethylene furniture?

This has become very popular in harsh beach environments, and it's sold by several patio furniture suppliers. Environmentalists love it b/c it's made entirely from a renewable resource.

We purchased THIS SET from LL Bean 5 yares ago and it's held up just beautifully at our SoWal cottage - we rinse it down once a year and it looks like new. This was a no-brainer purchase, and much classier than lightweight plastic from Walmart :shock:
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[SGB]

I can't believe what I'm reading here - cheap plastic furniture from Walmart and Home Depot???!

Hasn't anyone heard of the all-weather 100% high-density polyethylene furniture? This has become very popular in harsh beach environments. Environmentalists love it also: made entirely from a renewable resource.
We purchased THIS SET from LL Bean 5 yares ago and it's held up just beautifully: a no-brainer, and much classier than lightweight plastic from Walmart :shock:
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We have couple of these chairs on our dock. We've had them about 5 years and do like them, but we now can't get them clean and they are looking pretty worn although they are not falling apart. We did debate whether or not to get these for our rental, but instead opted for the cheap stuff after seeing what some renters and their kids are capable of. (The portability factor also really kicked in after the last few years of lugging those things off the dock a couple of times a year!)