12
Build.Refresh. Renovate.
Home Builders Association of Northern Michigan
March 2020
Earth-friendly
Deck furniture from recycled materials By Dave Coveyou, Coveyou Scenic Farm
W
e are only a few weeks away from pulling the deck furniture out of storage and getting ready for another wonderful year of relaxing outside. For years it was a bitter-sweet task. We would get excited for spring weather and pull out the aluminum and glass table set we acquired when we moved into our home. Each year there would be a little more rust on the frame joints and the chair cushions would not be as vibrant. Out came the wooden Adirondack chairs for the front porch too. Then I would remember that I hadn’t refinished those Adirondack chairs that had started peeling. The excitement would fade as my to-do list increased in length. That was how spring unfolded for us for several years. But then in early spring my wife suggested that we just upgrade the whole set to the new craze in outdoor patio furniture, poly furniture. Poly is the red-hot craze of making some of the most comfortable furniture you will ever sit in not out of wood, nor metal, but out of recycled plastic milk jugs. The evolution in plastic lumber is changing the industry. The furniture we purchased, and then began to sell, is made from poly-lumber that is 95% pure melted down milk jugs with color pigment mixed in to create a great variety of colors. It takes around 550 milk jugs to make
enough lumber for a typical chair. We were thrilled to discover that this furniture will never need painting so nothing will peel or flake. The color is solid all the way through making fading almost non-existent. Best of all, it will last a very long time. We no longer have to worry about the rain or cold. We just cover ours to keep the leaves off and don’t even need to bring it inside. We have found that in the spring, we
can clean the furniture with a little water to rinse it down and it’s as good as new. And its heavy enough to not blow around. The patio furniture we decided to sell at our farm store is made by an Amish group called Berlin Gardens from the Midwest. The new wood-like grain in the plastic has a texture look that is really impressive. It’s hard to tell from a distance that it is plastic. We hope you will stop by our
booth at the Northern Michigan Home and Outdoor Living Show on March 13 and 14 to see the variety of Amish made poly furniture we sell. About Coveyou Scenic Farm Market: Coveyou Scenic Farm Market carries a full line of Berlin Gardens poly furniture along with organic produce. The farm is run with solar and geothermal technology as well. More info atCoveyouScenicFarm.com