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Everyone thinks the Adirondack chair is about the curved back. It isn't. It's about two angles: the seat slopes back about 15°, and the back leans about 20° off that. Get those wrong and you've built a chair that's either impossible to get out of or actively hostile to sit in.
So: make a hardboard template for the curved seat support, and make it once. Every chair after the first one is a two-hour build.
Cedar for weather resistance. Stainless screws, because plain steel will bleed rust streaks down a cedar chair in one wet season.
| Item | Qty |
|---|---|
| Cedar, 1x6, 8 ftBack slats, seat slats, arms. | 5 each |
| Cedar, 2x4, 8 ftLegs and seat supports — the structural parts. | 2 each |
| Cedar, 1x4, 6 ft | 1 each |
| Stainless steel screws, #8 x 1-1/4" and 2"Stainless, not coated. Cedar's tannins eat plain steel and streak rust down the chair. | 60 each |
| Waterproof wood glue | 4 oz |
| Hardboard for template | 1 each |
| Exterior finish or leave rawOptional. Raw cedar silvers to grey and lasts fine. Finish means re-finishing, forever. | 16 oz |
Overall cost: $$. Lumber prices vary by region, species, and season, so we give a band rather than a figure we would only be pretending to know.
| Part | Qty | T × W × L |
|---|---|---|
| Rear legs / seat supportsCedarThe curved part. Cut from the template. This piece defines the chair's whole geometry. | 2 | 1 1/2" × 3 1/2" × 36" |
| Front legsCedar | 2 | 1 1/2" × 3 1/2" × 21" |
| Seat slatsCedarSpaced ~1/2" apart so rain drains through. | 6 | 3/4" × 3 1/2" × 22" |
| Back slatsCedarCut to a fan curve at the top — tallest in the center. | 7 | 3/4" × 3 1/2" × 32" |
| ArmsCedarWide enough to hold a drink. This is the single most appreciated feature of the chair. | 2 | 3/4" × 5 1/2" × 28" |
| Arm supportsCedar | 2 | 3/4" × 3 1/2" × 9" |
| Back bracesCedar | 2 | 3/4" × 3 1/2" × 22" |
Buy 8 boards at 8 ft.
2 boards
1 board
5 boards
Assumes 8 ft stock, a 1/8" saw kerf, and buying each part at its own width. Change the board size or kerf on the full board plan →
Draw the curved rear leg/seat support full size on hardboard. The seat section slopes back ~15°; the back support rises at ~20° off the seat.
Cut it, sand the curve fair, and sit on a mockup before you cut cedar. Clamp two scraps together at your angles and try it. Adjust until it's genuinely comfortable. Everything else in this build is downstream of this template.
Trace the template onto your 2x4 stock, twice. Cut with a jigsaw, staying just outside the line, then sand to the line — or rout flush with the template and a flush-trim bit.
The two must be identical. If they're not, the chair rocks.
Attach the front legs to the rear leg assemblies. Add a front cross-brace.
Check it sits flat on the floor with no wobble before you go further. Fix a wobble now, not after 13 slats are on.
Screw the six seat slats across the curved seat section, front to back, with ~1/2" gaps.
The gaps aren't a style choice — water has to get out, or the chair rots from the seat down.
Cut the back slats to a fan: tallest in the middle, stepping down toward the outside, with the tops rounded over.
Screw them to the two back braces — one low, one high — with even gaps. Do the layout on the ground first, get the fan symmetric, then attach.
Screw the arm supports to the front legs, then land the arms on top of them and into the back. Round over the front corners of the arms generously — they're what your forearm rests on for hours.
Make sure the arms are level with each other and with the ground.
Sand every edge and corner you can reach — this is a chair people sit in wearing shorts. Nothing sharp survives.
Leave the cedar raw and let it silver, or finish it and accept that you've signed up to redo that every couple of years. Raw is the honest answer.
Build the second one. The template's already made and it goes three times faster.
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