What do I do if my furniture arrives damaged? Contact us immediately by phone or email; explain damage and we will handle immediately to your satisfaction How do I finish my furniture? If you want to keep the natural Cinnamon/Honey wood color, You can use any brand of Deck Sealer. I have used Cabot in the past and have had good success. I can't get it locally anymore. I have used Olympic Elite with very little success. I wouldn't recommend it and will not use it. I'm trying Sherwin Williams Clear Oil now and will update when I have seen the results. Your finish should have some solids to help keep the UV rays from breaking down the finish. I put two coats of finish on. The first coat I put on a little heavier so the wood can soak up as much as possible. The second adds a little sheen and hardens the wood good. The more you put on, the more gloss you'll get and of course the longer it will last until you have to do it again. Two good coats should last one to two years. If you want to stain the furniture I have found a product called Ready Seal to be a goof proof solution. You can buy Ready Seal online at www.homedepot.com cheaper than you can get it from their website. Ready Seal will drop ship it to you. Check out their website for easy instructions. Spray on with a pump up garden sprayer and that's it. If you want to paint cedar you must first utilize a primer followed by two coats of color. If you do not use a primer, the cedar will always “bleed through”” your top coat. If you don't have a sprayer and need to brush it on, pick up some "penetrol" for oil paint or "flotrol" for latex where you buy your paint and add to the paint. It will do wonders to help keep the brush strokes down. What will happen if I don’t put any finish on my chair? Over time your chair will change to a silver/gray color. I have a beautiful picture of two chairs after a few years of weathering. I hand rubbed two coats of tung oil on these chairs and the owners just put them outside and they've been there since 2008. These pictures were taken in 2014. Go to our Pintrest page and you'll see the picture on the New Homes Board. They are still as soft and smooth as the first day. Putting Tung Oil on first was the trick. How can I find out about your new products? By checking our website from time to time. We update our website on a regular basis. We also have a facebook page and a pintrest page that will show new products as we develop them. What if I want to learn about making/distributing this type of furniture? Contact us by phone or email and we will send you details about becoming a distributor of our product. Why do you use Western Red Cedar? The best choice in wood for outdoor furniture construction is cedar. Cedar is a soft wood that is the color of cinnamon. It’s considered to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing woods available. It’s important that outdoor furniture be built with wood that will stay cool to the touch. Cedar fits this requirement to a tee. Chairs, benches, and swings built with cedar are both comfortable and strong. They will not be hot to either touch or sit on after being exposed to hot summer temperatures. This is extremely important to consider when purchasing materials for the outdoors. It’s very important to choose a wood that can stand up to constant exposure to moisture from rain, pools, or sprinklers. Cedar is the perfect choice. Cedar is able to naturally withstand the effects of moisture. The oils that are present within cedar work as a natural protecting agent against insect and fungi decay as well. It remains strong and beautiful for years. Another quality of cedar to consider when you are building outdoor furniture is the fact that cedar is lightweight. Lighter woods often resist cracks better than denser woods. This is important in the construction of furniture. Cedar lies flatter than many other woods. With less bowing or curving of the wood, the furniture retains its original shape longer and joints stay secure. There is not a better choice for outdoor furniture than cedar. What is the history of the Adirondack Chair? There is a little town on the edge of Lake Champlain, by the Adirondack Mountains, called Westport. The first Adirondack chairs were named after this town - Westport Chairs. In Blue Mountain Lake, New York, the Adirondack Museum proudly preserves the Adirondack chair's interesting history. The history goes that a man named Thomas Lee would spend each summer in Westport, New York with his large family. Stony Sides, the home his family occupied, had a shortage of patio furniture and Mr. Lee struggled to find true relaxation. In 1903, Thomas Lee began nailing boards together in his front lawn, crafting new chair designs for his 22-member family to sample. History proves that with all of this feedback, Lee created a unique new chair with a slanted seat and well-recognized spacious armrests. Lee's family whole-heartedly approved. History continues when Mr. Lee showed his new creation to a local carpenter he knew who owned a modest shop in town, Harry Bunnell. Bunnell predicted that the yearly residents flocking to the region during the summer would really appreciate Lee's chair. Although Lee originally intended the Adirondack chairs to make his family's summer stay at Stony Sides more pleasant, Bunnell saw the potential for great profit. In 1904, Bunnell requested a patent, calling the Adirondack chair the Westport chair. In the summer of 1905, and without Lee's knowledge, Harry Bunnell secured the patent for what would become one of the most recognized outdoor furniture pieces ever. Harry Bunnell's Westport Adirondack chair became popular all around the region. Over a twenty year period, Bunnell experimented with some variations on the original, including child Adirondack chairs and tete-a-tetes. Bunnell's Adirondack chairs were made of hemlock, painted in either dark brown or green, and signed by the carpenter himself.