A fitted cover and a shrink wrap are meant to do the same job: keep six months of weather off furniture nobody is going to sit in. They do not behave the same way. A cover keeps rain off the top and holds damp underneath. Shrink wrap is heat-shrunk to the shape of the furniture, so it holds its form and water has nowhere to pool. What goes wrong under a fabric cover Fabric covers fail in three predictable ways: they hold moisture against the wood, they chafe wherever they touch, and they come loose in a storm. All three matter more on the South Fork than they would inland, because our winter is wind-driven rain and freeze-thaw rather than a long dry freeze. The moisture problem is the one people miss. A cover that sheds rain also traps whatever humidity was under it, and every warm afternoon drives that moisture into the wood while every cold night condenses it back onto the underside of the fabric. The chafe problem shows up in one place: a loose corner flapping against the same slat from November to April will scour that slat while the rest of the piece goes untouched. And a cover with any sag in it collects snowmelt and leaf litter, which then sits over a joint for weeks at a ti
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