Restaurant patio reopening furniture checks that sort every piece into ready, fix or retire

What did the winter do to your chairs? You won't know until you carry them into daylight, and the first warm Saturday is a bad day to find out.

Give the patio one afternoon before that Saturday and sort every piece by what you can see and feel. Not by age, and not by what it cost: by condition. Each piece lands in one of three piles. Ready goes straight out. Fix gets a screw, a glide or a dab of touch-up paint. Retire leaves the building. What follows covers what puts a piece in each pile, then counts the weeks a retired chair can cost you.

Wash first, then look sideways

Hose everything down before you judge it. Grime hides hairline cracks and makes a sound finish look tired. Let the pieces dry in the sun, or take a towel to them, then look along each surface in low light from the side. Raking light shows chips and dents that midday glare flattens.

Turn every chair over. The underside is where a winter's dampness gathered, and the feet are where trouble starts. Check that each glide is present and whole, because a missing one chews a deck board and makes a chair rock. While it is upside down, snug every visible screw, and swap any glide that is cracked or worn flat. A stripped screw head belongs on the Fix list too. None of this takes long, and all of it shows up as a wobble on opening night if you skip it.

Frames, one material at a time

Run a thumb along every leg and rail of a steel chair, and press any dull or bubbled patch of finish. A chip the size of a pencil eraser on a black steel patio chair, which lists 18 pounds, stacking and patio use, is a Fix: clean it, dry it, seal it with touch-up paint made for the metal. Rust that has flaked or left a hole is a Retire.

Aluminum won't rust, so look for what it does suffer: dents, a bent leg, a chipped finish. An aluminum chair with a faux rattan seat lists 7 pounds and a 500-pound capacity. If a dropped stack has bent one of its legs, the chair no longer matches its page, and it goes in the Retire pile.

Resin chairs have their own tells. Look for hairline cracks where a leg meets the seat, and for a seat that stays dished after you lean on it. A scuff is Ready. A crack in a seat is Retire. Browse the patio chairs with these checks in mind and you will see why frame material counts for so much at reopening.

Bar stools get their own pass because guests climb them. Look at the footrest for a bend, test the seat for a twist on its post, and sit on each one yourself. A stool that looks fine standing still can feel different under a person, and if one fails, the patio bar stools page holds its replacement.

Then there is the wood-framed or padded dining chair that spent the winter, or worse the summer, outside. Move it indoors for good. Those chairs fade, swell or rust in the weather, and that exposure sits outside the warranty.

Tables and umbrellas under load

Set each table where it lives and lean on all four corners. On the patio tables, a table that rocks earns two questions: is the ground low there, or is a foot short? The table stability guide works through both. If the top has an umbrella hole, glance at its edge for chips. A metal patio table with legs and an umbrella hole comes in 30 by 48 inches or 36 by 36, and either way the hole is where a chip hides.

Open each umbrella in the yard before it goes on a table. Run the lift, watch the ribs spread, and look at the fabric along its folds. Then check the weight underneath. A steel umbrella base lists 50 pounds and fits 7 1/2 and 9 foot canopies, and a base with rust at its seams goes on the Fix list. Our patio umbrellas page shows what else is in that range.

Sixty chairs and a calendar

Say the patio runs 15 tables of four, which is 60 chairs, and a check takes 90 seconds a chair. That is 5,400 seconds, or 90 minutes of an afternoon. The tally comes back 47 Ready, 9 Fix and 4 Retire.

Nine fixes are an evening with a screwdriver and a can of paint. The four retired chairs are the real question. They leave you 56 chairs for 60 seats, so one table of four sits bare on opening weekend. Four pieces is also half of our order minimum, which is 8 pieces of tables and chairs, any mix, so you would add four spares, or a replacement for the table that rocked.

Now the calendar. For standard pieces the lead time is a range, 14 to 21 business days, and the transit days from the freight quote come on top. Count the long end. If opening is five weeks away, that is 25 business days, and 21 of them belong to the lead time. Four business days of slack remain, and the transit days come out of them.

The rule of thumb: run the check early enough that the long end of the lead time still lands a week before the first warm Saturday. Five weeks isn't enough. The freight arrives palletized, and unloading it is your crew's job, so the delivery page is worth a read before the truck is booked. The cost side of the same season sits in our seasonal costs guide, and this check tells you which of its lines you really need.

Where a reopening check goes wrong

One is checking only what is in front of you. The chairs in the closet get a look, and the six sitting on the far corner of the deck, where they spent the winter under a cover, get a nod. Check the whole inventory, including the pieces you think are fine, and if they wintered in a closet, the storage guide tells you what that routine should have done for them.

Another is putting Retire chairs back on the patio "for now." They end up under a guest on the busiest night. Carry them to the curb, or to a corner marked off with tape, the same afternoon.

Tape a color on every chair

Use painter's tape in three colors, or one color and a marker, and put a strip on every chair as you finish with it. Green is Ready, yellow is Fix, red is Retire. The tape stays on until the work is done, so anyone who walks the patio can see where things stand.

Then write the three counts in the notes of a patio plan, along with the date and the table that rocked. Next spring the numbers tell you whether the patio lost four chairs a year or fourteen. When the greens go out, put the freshest ones along the sidewalk edge, where passers-by decide whether to come in.