A New Rustic Bench!

February 3, 2017 - 5 comments

Hubby started this bench well over 10 years ago....

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He was planning on making it a bench for a piano we had at our old house. Well, as you can see it didn't get finished. We ended up moving, and the piano was too old and too heavy to move, so it stayed. The new owners were happy to have it. 😊

I'm going to share how I turned this into a beautiful

Rustic bench!

Would you look at the detail in this rustic wood? It's beautiful! I love all the "insect damage". (It's perfectly fine now.

This wood was given to us by a friend, it was part of a barn. It's chestnut wood and you can't find that around anymore. This wood is not stained... that's its natural beautiful color.

I've been wanting to finish it for a couple of years now, and decided now was the time. Well... I actually finished it around Thanksgiving of last year and I'm just getting around to telling you about it. I figured now was a good time as any, since I'm recovering from my shoulder surgery and all...😊

Since Hubby had already put together the base, I just had to build the top for it. It wasn't quite big enough. I wanted it to overhang just a bit. So, I used a 1x1 to frame it out.

Then I stained the frame and glued it together. By the way... those corner clamps are awesome!

Next up, I glued the slats to the edge of the frame.

And clamped them down using these awesome clamps! We use those clamps for practically everything we build!

To secure them I also nailed around the complete edge.

That top is looking pretty good. If you can't tell, that huge sheet of plywood is what we built our nativity scene out of. You can check it out, if you want.

Build An Outdoor Nativity Scene

It came out pretty cool! We're hoping to add pieces to it this year.

Now I had to decide about the legs. I went back-and-forth trying to decide whether I wanted them to match, or have a darker stain, or paint them white. I tried the stain, I didn't really like it. And I didn't like the idea of the whole being the same color.

So white they were. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures while I painted them, but I think you get the idea. Two coats of primer, 2 coats of paint. Its pretty easy!

This next part, is one of the most important. I wanted to make sure that this bench could hold any amount of weight. I secured it by placing three 2 x 4's underneath and nailing them in on the sides and from the top. I just used scrap that I had hanging around in the garage.