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."
