Bench

After living in their current home for 20 or so years my parents decided it was time to remodel their ‘entry’ or foyer. In all those 20 years, there has never been anything to sit on to tie your shoes so I decided it was time to fix that problem.

I saw this bench in Woodsmith Magazine and decided it was the perfect fit. The painted portions are made of paint grade soft maple with a spray on finish. The seat is made of ash with ~6 coats of wipe on poly. If I remember right, it took 20 loose tenon joints to put the whole thing together, so it was a great opportunity to play with my new Festool Domino!

I finally hauled it ‘home’ to my parents this past weekend and it was a hit.

UPDATE – commenting on various questions that have been asked below along with some of my own additions. Harass me if I missed yours. :-)

Paint/wood combination – I can’t take credit for that..I just copied the Woodsmith one.

Baskets – The baskets are milkcrate baskets from Target. They had about 5 different styles so I made the openings big enough to fit any of them. Considering their location, I figure it’s only a matter of time before a heel goes through one so I wanted to make sure replacements were easy to find. Woodsmith put a nifty interactive PDF in their online resources where you can type in the size of the basket and it’ll recalculate the cut list for you. That really made it a breeze.

Challenges – The biggest challenge was gluing up the back section because of all the slats in the backrest and a floating hardboard panel behind the baskets.. I basically broke it into 3 steps. 1) glue the back slats in place. There isn’t much wood-to-wood contact there and I fully expect the glue to pop loose at some point but it at least held things in place for the rest of the assembly. There are spacers between the slats so if they do pop loose it won’t really matter. I think I clamped the posts on the sides without tenons during this step just to make sure it was all square. 2) glue some of the loose tenons into one side…basically to avoid fumbling with them all at once. 3) put the hardboard panel in place and glue the side posts in place

Changes – The main thing I’d change is use 1/4” ply instead of hardboard on the sides and back. Hardboard looks nice on the outside but looks ugly on the inside. Granted the baskets block it most of the time but I know what it looks like and it bothers me. :-)

-- --Adam