Gettin' Benched

For Thanksgiving this year, my family decided that it was the new homeowner's turn to host the festivities. My parents and brother all came in and stayed for a week and boy, did we get a LOT done.

My Dad was the last person to have seen the house (Since you'll remember my Mom's visit here and when Patrick came up here), so he had been planning his 'blog project' for a couple of months. When he saw that Scott and I had installed the board & batten entry, he knew that it was missing something: a bench.

When he first told me about the idea, I thought it sounded just right. I knew he was referencing other entries that looked like this.

So when they got here, we got to work. We grabbed the wood we needed from Home Depot (along with a new Ryobi drill and batteries!) and headed into the garage. Dad started by cutting three lengths of the pine into equal parts to create the bench seat.

We then lined them up and used spacers to make everything equal and to allow for expansion. This also made everything look even.

 

The two biggest problems that we faced were the cold and the fact that Scott and I don't have a work bench or saw horses. Assembling and cutting on the floor wasn't the most fun, efficient, or comfortable way to build, but we managed to get the whole thing done right as the sun went down, so at least we weren't out there at night.

To support and brace the seat, we use pieces that were almost the length of the width of the seat to hold the seat together. These pieces were glued in place using Gorilla Wood Glue, then held in place with screws.

We made sure to leave a little bit of a gap at the back of the seat so allow for the main rear support (no pun intended) to be attached. For orientation, you're looking at the bottom of the seat.

We then cut the shelf that would go between the legs of the bench to hold shoes. We cut it to fit within the outermost portion of the support slats.

We then cut and attached the legs, then the shelf, using wood glue and screws to hold it together.

On it's own, it wasn't amazingly sturdy, so we added some supports. We even added a 2x4 to really help give it some heft.

We added an extra support slat under the seat just because we had the extra wood and a little extra bracing never hurt.

When we finished, we stood back for a second and admired our work. Not too shabby!

And it really helps our entry that went from this:

To this:

Dad even gave it a first test run!

I have plans to paint it white, but I'm waiting until the weather isn't so wintery so that I can do it in the garage. For right now, though, it's a nice place to take off your muddy,snow covered shoes and be welcomed into our home.

This isn't the only project we worked on while Mom and Dad were here! Come back tomorrow for a HUGE project we did that took about 4 days!