At the beginning of the summer — before the crazy summer heat — we spend almost every evening outside in our back yard. I wanted to create a chair for my daughter to sit in on those rare occasions she was not playing in her playhouse or the homemade sensory table. After some searching, I found Ana White’s plans for a child’s Adirondack chair; I modified these plans for the current project.
Building a Homemade Child’s Adirondack Chair
First I went to the big box store for some wood. I went with pressure treated wood, since this would be outside all the time. HD didn’t have 1x3s, so I used 1x4s and ripped them down to size. There wasn’t a great selection of clean, knot-free lumber, so I picked up some extra wood so I could be picky with what I used.
I cut down all my wood to length and ripped the boards to the right width. Since it was such a nice day, I set up a temporary outdoor workshop, rather than in the cramped shed I’m using as my current shop.
To make the edges smooth to the touch, I added a simple roundover at the router table. Here’s another perk of working outdoors: nature takes care of dust management for the router table!
At this point, it got a little too hot outside to work, so I moved the production inside our cool basement. I used glue and screws to hold all the pieces together, and predrilled and countersunk the holes for the screws. With all that support, these pieces aren’t going anywhere!
At first we thought of using the chair unfinished. We tried that for a few weeks, but then found a grey outdoor stain that would match the rest of our outdoor furniture.
