I recently bought a couple of Adirondack chairs and had just finished painting them. Don’t know if you’ve ever painted ADK chairs before but it takes a lot of time and persistence. Sometimes it can take up to a full week depending on the humidity. I woke up on that Sunday morning and went out to sit and admire and have tea and breakfast. Low and behold a squirrel decided to devour one of them. It was a real shocker! All the white wood chips were on the porch and you could see it’s little claw marks everywhere. Not to mention the 3 enormously large gnaw marks on both the chairs arms. 2 on the left and 1 on the right. I can only think that the squirrel must have smelled the paint and thought it was food. We have about 6 chairs that sit outside and this kind of damage has never happened before. He must have been pretty hungry!
Today I’m going to explain, step by step how to fix an Adirondack chair after it’s been eaten by a squirrel.
Step one – Clean it up, take off any access slivers of wood and sand it, just a bit just to make it clean and ready for the next step.
Step two – Use wood filler or wood cement. I like Elmer’s Carpenter’s Wood Filler the best. Get a putty knife and fill up the holes as best you can so there is no holes or any space left.
Step three – Let it dry overnight. Make sure it’s hard and solid.
Step four – Use either sandpaper , a sand block or an orbital sander to smooth down the edges. I choose to use sandpaper for this project.
Step five – Once it’s sanded, smooth and clean you’re ready to paint. You can use a brush or spray paint. I choose spray paint for this project and put on a coat of primer and a coat ofRust-oleum Spray paint gloss white.
And that’s it. Takes about a day and it looks just like new! I just hope that squirrel doesn’t come back for seconds.
