<p>Ernie Atkinson used vintage water skis to make these chairs.</p>

Whoever heard of Adirondack chairs made out of water skis?

If you’re Ernie Atkinson, you just make it up, creating new things out of old. So, chairs out of water skis aren’t any kind of a stretch for him. He calls himself a scavenger because he looks at wood that others throw away and sees new and different things that he can make out of it.

Some Astorians know Atkinson because he taught their children, either in the middle school or at John Jacob Astor Elementary School. He was a reading specialist and started the reading program at Astoria Middle School. He has even taught kindergarten. “Most teachers go up in the grades or into administration; not me, I went down to the little ones.” He retired in 1999 – leaving lots of time for pursuing his favorite hobby – woodworking.

Visiting the Atkinsons’ home is a tour of what a really talented woodworker and careful craftsman can do with whatever he finds.

“We bought this house for a song in 1976 and it was a wreck,” Atkinson said. “The ceiling had been lowered, the woodwork painted – it had been fixed-down’ instead of fixed up. It was badly muddled. Under the false ceiling I found vertical grain Doug fir and clear cedar.”

That was just the beginning of a long-term restoration project. Judy and Ernie Atkinson’s home is a thing of beauty now, sitting high on a hill with a glorious view of their own gardens and the shipping lanes.

We visited on a particularly beautiful day, sat on those unique chairs out on their patio, looked at the view and enjoyed last-of-the-season blueberries picked on the spot right out of the garden. (Judy found a big, fat zucchini lurking under its lavish foliage and offered it to this lucky visitor who quickly accepted it.)

In addition to the main house, there is a small playhouse and a two-story guest house, referred to as the “Giggle House” because that’s what the grandkids (soon there will be 10) do when they come to spend the night in it.

Atkinson has been repurposing things since he was a kid. He once made a new boat out of an old boat, has built bike frames and has restored several houses. It’s hard to believe that this is not his lifetime vocation, but he was a teacher for many years, doing woodworking in his spare time and on vacations.

In addition to their home, he has restored a 100-year-old farmhouse in Forest Grove, a Dutch colonial in Antioch, Calif., and a Victorian cottage, bringing them all back to their original splendor.

He comes by this talent honestly, along with his penchant for bringing things back to the way they were meant to be.

His grandfather owned Clinton Mill and Manufacturing Company in Oakland, Calif., where they specialized in restorations. The firm – working with Julia Morgan, the architect of more than 700 buildings in California, best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon – made duplicate pieces of what William Randolph Hearst saw in his travels abroad.

Atkinson started working on a kit boat when he was quite young. He ran into a bit of trouble and asked his grandfather to take a look at it. Grandad packed kit (and kaboodle) to his company and 12 hours later Atkinson had a boat. He watched it all happen and learned a great deal in the process.

He got started on the Adirondack chairs when he saw some made out of barrel staves and others made from snow skis. He judged that the snow skis were too flexible so thought: “Why not water skis?”

He ran an ad in The Daily Astorian asking for old water skis and had calls from everywhere. He even had someone give him a “Maherajah,” from a maker of custom wood water skis since 1950. When he learned of its value as a collectible, he asked the owner if he really wanted to part with it. He did, and it became part of one of Atkinson’s chairs. Each chair is unique. He uses the wood available and leaves logos intact on each one, uses the skis’ fins as decorative objects and often combines fir, cherry, oak and redwood in his creations.

We asked him “What’s next?” and his response was, “I’ll let you know.”