I have this little bench at the foot of my bed. You may have noticed it before in posts about our master bedroom. It’s this one here:
Why are there pumpkins in the picture, you ask? Well, that’s just because this room hasn’t been close to clean enough to have a picture taken of it in at least 4 months. So you get pictures from October instead. You can handle that though, can’t you? 🙂
Everything still looks the same in here, only messier.
So anyway, I wanted to talk to you about this bench today because I’ve been noticing that I’ve been getting a lot of pin compliments on it lately. Like, when people pin a picture of the room, they’ll say something like “Love the bench!” I thought you should know that it’s really nothing fancy (although that doesn’t stop me from loving it) and you can have one too pretty easily, if you find it striking your fancy.
Chris actually built this for me one day when I was at work about 4 or 5 years ago. I showed him a picture one night and he just went and built it for me the next day. It looks super cute in any space and gives off a really neat farmhousy vibe, but it’s really only 5 simple shapes, nailed together.
There’s a straight top, two “leg” pieces, and two front apron pieces. That’s it!
Start out by cutting yourself a top. Our top is a basic 1×10 pine board and it’s 34 inches long.
The sides are pieces of the same 1×10 board, cut to 18″ long with a little triangle notched out. The angle of the triangle doesn’t really even matter, just eyeball it with the mitre saw and then finish off the cut with a handsaw. Do that for both leg pieces.
The front pieces are just 1×4 boards cut to 34″ long with little 45 degree triangles notched out of the ends on both sides.
There! 5 minutes later and you have all your pieces cut!
Attach the front apron pieces to the top with some wood glue and nails, then flip the whole thing over.
Chris cut these little triangles out of some scrap wood and used those along with some wood glue and nails to attach the leg pieces on. If you’re not as confident with a saw as he is, I’d suggest just grabbing a few basic metal brackets while you’re at the hardware store buying your wood.
Something like this:
Let all your wood glue dry and you’re ready to go!
I finished mine by using some dark wood stain and a few different colors of paint to make it look like it’s really been around. I used a screw driver to really scratch it up good as well. You can see the cats have been helping me rough it up over the years too by scratching at the legs. I’ll just add a little more dark stain there and it will look even better!
I can never believe my eyes when I see the prices on benches like these in stores. They can be up to $200 sometimes! If you’ve had your eyes on a farmhousy piece like this, why not just try making your own?
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.