Barn Wood Bench

Ya'll, this might be my favorite thing yet so I'm really excited to share this! 

Good morning and happy Monday! I had mentioned in a previous post (A Vase and a Lamp Shade) that I had a list of things we needed for our bedroom. Well today, I got to cross one off! Here's where we stand:

List of things we need:

Nightstands

Lamps

End of bed bench

So, back in the spring we went to one of my favorite flea markets in Round Top (Like, seriously....it's huge. A junkers haven!) and found this nice man who was selling old barn wood out of the back of his pick up. Hubs and I didn't have a clue what we wanted to do with it but we new we loved the looks of it so we bought over 50 feet for $15 bucks. Crazy! 

This seems to happen a lot, but Hubs and I spent hours shopping for a bench to go at the end of our bed. It was shocking how expensive those suckers were! $200 bucks here, $500 bucks there. What?! No way am I spending that kind of money on a bench I will probably never sit on (let's be honest - it's really just for looks, right?) So I told Hubs that we should just try to make one. After several discussions, we finally had a light bulb go off and realized we had an old table that we weren't using anymore and we could salvage the legs for our bench. THEN we remembered about our barn wood and decided that would make a unique top for our bench. Done and done! Let's get started. 

First, I laid out all of our barn wood, picked my favorite pieces, and got them arranged how I liked. We decided to make the bench 4.5 feet long (remember - our bed is huge) and about 18 inches wide. So, I measured the wood, made my marks and and started cutting! 

Yes, that giant saw still scares the crap out of me!!

Second we removed the legs from the old table and sanded them down to their natural state so we could paint them the color we wanted later. Since they were already used as table legs, it made assembly really simple.  

We even used the old hardware and leg supports from the table to attach the legs to the bench. Then we cut a couple smaller pieces to support the top (just in case we ever did decide to sit on it!) and for easy attachment to the barn wood. 

In this picture you can see the corner leg supports. We just paid close attention to how we took the legs off the old table and tried to replicate it when putting the legs onto our bench. It worked out well! Oh - and a Kregg Jig will come in handy for this project so you can make pocket holes and attach your supports easily. 

*Quick side note - I thought the underside of the barn wood made a neat pattern as well. I always suggest to play with everything you have. Turn it upside down, flip it over, and look at it at every angle before you make a decision. Something really simple could really change the looks of your piece.* 

Once everything was in place we gave it a quick sanding and a coat of paint. I didn't do anything fancy with this paint. All it took was a couple quick coats of the color you decide on. We used an antique grey. Oh! And that bottom piece, it was just shelving wood you can pick up at your local home improvement store. We splurged a little on that purchase (I think it was around 20 bucks)! All in all I think we ended up spending less than $30 on our bench! 

And for a little extra storage, I bought these wicker baskets at Garden Ridge. They had a HUGE selection of any shape, color, size, and style you like. It's a great place for extra tee shirt storage (if you have a ton like me) or even extra blankets and pillows. 

KC