Custom cushions for Polish apartments, balconies and mountain houses

Four seasons of Polish weather, read as a load chart

Poland's meteorological institute, IMGW-PIB, publishes Warsaw's 1981–2010 normals, and they read like a spec sheet. January: 33.3°F (0.7°C) by day, 24.0°F (−4.4°C) at night. July: 76.3°F (24.6°C) by day, 56.6°F (13.7°C) at night. Precipitation: 20.9 in (531.5 mm) a year, on about 159 days.

Two details matter more than the totals. Average nights stay below freezing from December through March. And summer brings about twice the precipitation of winter, in showers and thunderstorms between sunny spells.

The south runs colder and wetter. Kraków's January nights average 22.5°F (−5.3°C). Zakopane, at 2,805 ft (855 m) under the Tatras, gets 45.1 in (1,145 mm) a year, most of it in summer, and has snow on the ground about 179 days a year.

Design loads, then: sun and sudden rain on the balcony; frost and cold glass by the window seat; both, plus wet boots, in the mountains.

Balcony and działka: two outdoor seats, one winter plan

A typical modern Polish balcony is a cantilevered concrete slab reaching up to about 59 in (1.5 m) from the wall, behind a railing 35 to 43 in (0.9 to 1.1 m) high. A small room with a low wall. Plan the seat to it: - Chair pads: 2 in (5 cm); 3 or 4 in (7.5 or 10 cm) for long sitting. - Bench: a 4 in (10 cm) seat and a back cushion of about 2 in (5 cm). - Ties at the back corners. A railing is not a windbreak.

Then there is the działka. Poland has almost 5,000 family allotment gardens, with about 966,000 plots on nearly 44,000 hectares (about 109,000 acres). Building law lets an allotment arbor of up to 377 sq ft (35 m²) go up without a building permit: small, unheated, and damp from late autumn to spring. Cushions should not winter there.

A buyer wrote in with a plan for a garden bench, backs of roughly 71 x 16 and 84 x 16 in (180 x 40 and 213 x 40 cm). The indoor bench fabric they first asked about was not rated for outdoors, so the job moved to outdoor fabric, and the backrests were made foam-filled like the seats. Settle fabric and backrest type first; then follow the winter storage Pattern each November.

Kamienica windows: deep niches, measured in centimeters

A kamienica is a brick or stone tenement of two floors or more, built wall to wall along the street, so its large windows face the front. Those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in Kraków, Warsaw or Łódź, often have high ceilings, and masonry walls thick enough to set the window in a deep niche. For custom cushions in Kraków or Warsaw, that niche is the classic job.

Measure it like a part drawing, partner: 1. Width at the back of the niche and at the front edge. If they differ by more than 3/8 in (1 cm), it is a trapezoid, not a rectangle. 2. Depth at both ends. 3. Clearance from the seat to anything above it: a sill, a handle, an inner sash. 4. Every number in centimeters. No inch conversions, no rounding.

The trapezoid calculator checks that an angled niche closes, and the Pattern on window seat thickness covers thin builds. Czech box windows raise the same questions; see Czechia.

Mountain houses: wood, snow and a firm bench

In the Tatra foothills the Zakopane style still sets the look: wood as the main material, steep roofs, high foundations of split stone, sunburst trim on the gables. A wooden house wants a wooden bench, and a bench wants a cushion.

Snow on the ground for about half the year means wet boots and heavy coats on that bench. So: - Firm foam: the standard about 2.0 lb/ft³ (32 kg/m³), medium-firm to firm, about 6 to 7 on a 1-to-10 scale. The foam firmness finder compares grades. - A zip-off cover that washes at 86°F (30°C). - Ties or a non-slip base, so the cushion stays put.

A corner bench is two cushions, not one L: one runs into the corner, the other is shortened by the seat depth. The L-shaped bench Pattern has the arithmetic.