DIY Bench

Cory and I have been lucky to move into a great townhouse here in Kansas. It's not a very big place, but it's just the right amount of space that we need. We needed a bench to sit down on in our mudroom/entryway in the basement. We didn't want to spend a ton of money, so thankfully Cory is good with the drill.

We used this plan from Ana White to make the bench. Cory made a few adjustments because we wanted to make it a little bit smaller. 

Materials and Tools

• 1 - 2x6 ($4.55)
• 2 - 2x4s ($5.46)
• box of screws ($3.23)
• wood stain ($4.38)
• sandpaper
• drill
• saw

Total project cost: $17 

Cory gettin' the job done.

Pre-stain. Oh so pale. 

We used the Minwax wood stain in classic gray. The longer you let the stain soak into the wood, the darker the stain becomes. Which may seem obvious to most people, but make sure you test the stain on a spare piece of wood before doing your whole project.

The gray piece at the bottom is what the stain looks like without rubbing it off yet. Pretty dark.

 Both pieces after rubbing the excess stain off:

And there she is! Since I didn't really do any of the work, I can't say how easy it was. But it took Cory a couple hours to get it done. And he said it wasn't that hard. So I'll probably ask him to make a coffee table now. 

P.S. This is not our mudroom. Our mudroom is ugly and not cute. But maybe one day the bench will get promoted upstairs.